I'm mulling over whether to join the 24 hour play writing competition again. I joined in 1999 and 2004, and thought, "once in 5 years is not too bad" but I'm not sure. It doesn't please me at all to think about whether I'm less creative now than I was as a kid.
I’ve always wanted to post the play I wrote in 1999. Time really flies, it’s 10 years later now. There are some parallels: in this play, A is the older version of B. Because of some time warp, they are living in the same physical space. 10 years ago, I was in the same position as B, thinking about my choices in life. Now, I’m in the same position of A, thinking about the choices that B made 10 years ago.
I was lucky that the premise came to me very early on. The game master said in a throwaway remark, “try to incorporate the stimuli into the play. Don’t just make it happen once. Twice is even better.” A bulb went off in my head: a play where everything happens twice! The same life lived twice over!
I had recently watched “the Double Life of Veronique”, about twins living different lives in different countries. It was an intriguing prospect. I had named the play “A Double Life” in explicit reference to that. But I had made a variation on the theme: This was twin brothers, 10 years apart.
The plan that I had (and at that time I only knew about the first stimulus, the UE square Mall) was that I would write a play about a person looking back at his former self, and reflecting upon his life. I had already decided that the central theme of my play was going to be karma. It was a favourite theme of mine. Yes, there are a few coincidences but otherwise everything that happens happens for a reason. Shakespeare's plays were about karma and in a way that influenced me. A quote I pulled about Shakespeare: A.C. Bradley argues," the playwright always insists on the operation of the doctrine of free will; the (anti)hero is always able to back out, to redeem himself. But, the author dictates, they must move unheedingly to their doom." That is an approach I have also tried to take.
The miracle was that I was able to work all the stimuli into my play without having to deviate from that basic plan. First, if you are going to enter one of these competitions, common sense tells you that you put the physical setting of your play to be the same as the location of the competition, since the physical location is the source of most of the clues. Still, some things were unexpected, like the plaster. I was lucky that I could fit that in, whereas somebody might just run out of ideas. Still, no matter how many plot twists I had to put into the play to incorporate the clues, the basic shape was sound. A person, going through life, reflecting on his mistakes, and making mistakes. I never had to change that.
There was a fair amount of amusement at reading this again. I was a little surprised that I managed to come up with all these ideas in 24 hours. I knew that I only managed to win something because I wrote the best play I had ever written. (OK, the second best play: that one I wrote in school has a special place in my heart.) I’m also surprised at how horny I was at that time.
(the following is an email to my sister)
I wonder if I told you that I joined the 24 hour play writing competition. It was OK... just a bunch of people sitting together for 24 hours and getting totally sick of each other at the end of it.
For me the real fun began when I was about to hand up the play. We were all given a floppy disk each and were told to save our play on it, and they would print out a copy of the play. 2 hours from time, we were told that there was to be no handing up during the last 2 hours, in order to prevent chaos and confusion. I deemed my play finished / irrepairable by that time but by the time I had finished fumbling with the ejection, the handing up process had closed. I was pissed off, naturally, having been denied an opportunity to go home early, but at least I had the thing ready on disk and I was waiting for 4 o'clock to arrive.
Suddenly I remembered that I forgot to format the script, so I just popped in the diskette, did the formatting. But when I wanted to get the diskette out, the button came stuck. PANIC! People were hovering around me, offering helpful advice, screaming into walkie-talkies, tearing their hair out. I being I at the eye of the storm was in zen calmness. Fortunately for me there was a cyber-cafe nearby and I popped in to borrow their facilities. I emailed a copy of the play to myself, retrieved it one of their computers, and copied it onto a diskette.
So now that we got that out of the way, what dey do is to give us 5 stimuli at 4 hour intervals and we would write a play incorporating these 5 stimuli and mostly be happy that the insanity was over. The 5 stimuli were:
1 One day in UE square mall (to be quoted in verbatim at the start of the play)
2 Under a bridge (they drove us under a bridge in a bumboat for that stimulus. We could incorporate anything that had to do with being under a bridge.)
3 A wedding of some sort had to be in the play, or made reference to.
4 A warehouse (they brought us to one which used to be for holding tea leaves, and now contains lots of canned food)
5 A plaster. (The first aid appliance, not the building material)
The thing:
A Double Life
Scene 1
A and B take up positions on stage left and stage right respectively. All is dark save for one spotlight each on both A and B.
A: One day at UE Square shopping mall I saw somebody who looked just like me. What he was dressing, what he was carrying, his manner of walking. unmistakable. But as I turned to call him..
B: I turned around and I thought that there was somebody calling after me. I looked around and I couldn't see what was wrong. But there was this figure.. I could have sworn..
A: I disappeared behind a pillar and hoped that he did not see me.
B: But I caught a glimpse of him. I wanted a second look, but he was gone or something. No, he wasn't gone. He was still there. I knew it. He was just there, hiding away from me..
A: I didn't know if he was still there, but I definitely had the feeling..
B: I don't know if he knew I was watching him. I wanted to see if he was coming up again..
A: I couldn't get up. I knew that if I got up, that would be it, he would see me, we would see each other, and then he would come over and..
B: I wanted to get to know him better. I would've come up to him and say, "Hi, I'm..
A: Mr So-and-so, he would want to know how I was doing, and he'd come and ask about.
B: I'd wanted to know if he had his wife and kids ..
A: But I didn't want him to know, so what I did was I waited.
B: So I walked up to the pillar..
A: And I made a dash for it.
B: And I saw him make for the car-park.
A: I didn't look back to see if he was still there..
B: And I gave chase..
A: Yet when I got into my car.
B: It was there and then that I got a glimpse of him. I was..
A: I nearly ran him over. He was right in my path. I stopped just in time...
B: And when I got to the side of the car..
A: I sped off again. Just like that. I don't know if..
B: I wished I took down his number. I was just so stunned. There wasn't much light, but I was pretty sure that.
A: How could there be anybody who looked so much like me? I wanted to know if there were somebody.
B: He was just like me from the outside! I thought I was looking into a mirror.
A: But I couldn't bear him knowing about me. That was just not right.
B: What could he have to hide away from me? It was a big car. A great big volvo..
A: Sure. I wouldn't really mind knowing about him.. But at that time.
B: He must have seen me. he must have been avoiding me for the very same reason that I wanted.
A: I don't know. I just couldn't. Something inside me said..
B: But that guy.. his car.. What I wouldn't give to be in his shoes.
(Exit B, enter A's wife, Jackie)
Jackie: Hey, you're back early!
A: (flustered, struggling to regain his composure) Well. I couldn't find
that piece of antique furniture that you were talking about. There wasn't much else to do there but.
Jackie: And you did drop the suit over at the laundry, didn't you?
A: Well. I. it must have slipped my mind or something.. Shall I..
Jackie: well, doesn't really matter. It's probably closed by now. Are you alright. you're not your usual self lately. I got the maid to prepare some chicken soup for you.
A: I'm fine, actually. And nothing's the matter.
Jackie: All the better that you're alright, and nothing's wrong with you. There's the stocking operation that's coming right up, and a lot riding on it's outcome. I dunno about you, but father said . (A bristles at the mention of her father and turns away) . hey, are you listening to me? Father said that there're a couple of very capable new people around right now, and any one of them could displace you as the next favoured man. It's all up to you to prove to father that you've still got what it takes.
A: I know, I know. The stocking operation is really my problem and not..
Jackie: How can you say that it's not my problem? I always get worried sick about you all the time. I haven't a problem with father. He's been at it long enough to know when to start another operation and when to lie low. But I think all the time about what would happen if they were to catch you and throw you in. Who's going to pay off the installments for our properties in Johor?
A: You can't always expect things to go your way all the time, right?
Jackie: Is that what you're going to tell me when they throw you in? What's the matter with you? You didn't always use to be this way. You were always the most alert one, the most willing to learn. Now look at you . How are we going to upkeep our way of life if you are just going to spend the rest of your life getting the meagre cut of the profits, if you don't eventually inherit father's position? Take away the monthly installments on all the furniture we have, all of Sam and Jane's tuition, we're not very rich at all.. How about having to pay the Chauffer and the gardener every month.
A: All right, all right. I get your point. there's no need to get so upset. Just leave me alone now, alright? I've got a lot on my mind already..
Jackie: OK. But I just had to remind you about what's it like out there. (turns coquettish, sits down behind A, wraps her arms around him) You go there, do a good job, and don't let me down, alright?
A: (simmering down) OK. I'll see what I can do.
Jackie: Remember, father still thinks very highly of you, even though you nearly screwed it up the last time.
A: Yes. don't remind me about that right now.
Jackie: Alright, I've got to fix dinner right now. (exits.)
(Lights off, except for spot light on A, he's in a thinking position.)
A: Why did I run away? Why would it have bothered me if he asked me about my life? I couldn't tell him I was married to a daughter of a bootlegger, I could lie, but he would look into my eyes and tell me immediately that I was lying to him. But I gotta know more about him . I'm going to find out more . I have to know what it's like being him if he hadn't gone the same way as I did. (Off spotlight.)
Scene 2 B and his friend and colleague, Linda are talking at the photoshop, eating canned food.
Linda: More peas?
B: (mouth full of baked beans) Oh, it's alright. (Swallows his food) So I couldn't understand it. Why did he want to run away just as he was about to see me?
Linda: He was probably too freaked out by what he saw.
B: Oh, I freak people out, is that it?
Linda: Hey, you got to consider that he's someone who looks just like you. I'm surprised you didn't get freaked out at all. I would have thought it was really creepy.
B: Well, I didn't really give a second thought to it. But I was really really curious to have a second look at him, just to see what he was like.
Linda: Most likely he got scared off by you. Can you imagine what it's like having the shock of seeing your doppelganger compounded by having him run after you on sight?
B: Hey, I only really noticed him when he started dodging away from him. That was when I first realised that something fishy was going on.
Linda: So, what made you want to go chasing after him?
B: I. don't really know. was it recognition? I just had to go see what he was like, I mean, someone out there, who's just so much like me, I just had to know about the life that he's living.
Linda: But you don't even know what he's like on the inside. All you know is that on the outside he just looks and walks a little bit like you.
B: That's not all, alright? He was like, you know, the very splitting image of me. And anyway, whatever's a person like from the outside, it's a manifestation of what he's like on the inside. That's the first principle of photography. Everytime I take a picture of another guy, I'm not only capturing his outward appearances, I also uncover something about his soul.
Linda: That's true. That's what taking pictures is all about.
B: And if you have 2 people who really look alike, talk alike, walk alike, I suppose deep down, they do really have something in common. After all, it's what's inside of you that finds its way to the surface of a person.
Linda: But we're only talking about stuff like facial expression, body language.
B: That's what I mean, you see? Eventually the kinds of expressions you have on your face are going to shape what your face will look like eventually.
Linda: Well . that's true. We're having canned peaches for desert today
B: That's a rare luxury.
Linda: So suppose you were going to meet him. What're you going to say to him?
B: Well, we'd sit down and share my life experiences. Maybe we're fated to go through the same kinds of experiences together, but I may have gone through something he hasn't yet gone through, so I could tell him about my experiences, and maybe we could.
B: All that canned food .
Linda: That's all we can afford. We're going to have to cut down on the living expenses. I'm down to my last thousand dollars.
Linda: Well.. (looks at how B's fixing up his equipment) who're you fixed up to shoot today?
B: Jennifer (fill in your own last name)
Linda: Oh, wow, you actually got her.
B: Well, she's .
Linda: Just merely the hottest model around today. Plus she's the daughter of some rich trading company's chairman.
B: Ho.. I didn't know that last bit.
Linda: So you're in good company, aren't you?
B: Well. every model's just a pretty face to me.
Linda: Yah right.
(B finishes packing his equipment, and both him and Linda start walking off the stage)
Saturday, 30 May 2009
Saturday, 23 May 2009
Football Betting Week 6
Last week was a bad week for me. 2 bets went awry, and then I realised that I should not have bet on them at all. I should not have bet on Hamburg and Werder Bremen to win their respective matches because they had just played 5,6 games in 3 weeks. Simple things like this - why do I keep fucking up?
The last week of the Premiership and the Bundesliga. I missed 1 easy bet when Shaktar Donesk played Werder Bremen in the UEFA cup final. I should have bet on Shaktar to win. (As in win the competition, not win the match because after 90 minutes it was a draw.)
This week, I have the chance to recoup all my losses. I just have to win all my bets. This is not as difficult as it sounds, because, remember, I am in the habit of making safe(r) bets.
Hoffenheim are in better shape than they were during their slump. So I bet on them to eat 1.5 ball against Schalke 04 who were so crap 2 weeks ago that they let relegation candidate Mochengladbach beat them. As of now, Hoffenheim are tied 2-2 with Schalke 04, and can let 1 more goal in and I'm still safe.
Wolfsburg have to beat Werder Bremen in order to ensure they win the Bundesliga. So let them do it. Right now, in the middle of the 2nd half, they are leading 3-1. Wolfsburg winning their first Bundesliga! Imagine! What a change from the EPL where it's always the Big 4 taking the top 4 and the big 4 minus Liverpool winning.
I rely on Werder Bremen and Schalke 04 to play their parts because since they fucked me up before this is the least they owe me. (Edit: yesssss... I win my 2 bundesliga bets. I am safe!!!)
For tomorrow, I say that Chelsea beats Sunderland. Chelsea still have a mathematical chance of beating Liverpool to 2nd and they can only do that if they win. Also I bet on Everton to eat ball vs Fulham. Since when have Fulham been so powerful that they give ball to Everton? Well if the bookies want to be stupid let them be.
You know me, I know what I'm doing. I can win it all back. My luck is changing. I'm going to strike the big one. Imagine what we can do. One more try. This will be my last. I promise I will give it back to you.
OK, I'm not kidding, when I say I can win it all back. I've been keeping count and I'm around $10 behind. I only bet $10 at a time. I've wagered less than $500 so far this season and getting back $490 is not that bad, even though it's hardly profitable.
Unlike fat boy who puts in $100 at 1 shot. There was this time, middle of last week, when he asked me whether I wanted to go bet on Sunderland vs Portsmouth. Now you know, betting on 2 evenly matched teams is not my style because you never know what's going to happen. He also asked me to go bet on even goals for some S-league match. That's not my style because I only bet on 80%, 90% outcomes. He asked me to go down to Sing Pools to bet, I refused. I'm wary, almost every time I've (intentionally or otherwise) deviated from my own principles, I've been punished.
Next day he was $600 poorer. Now I feel a little sorry for him because he only started betting again because he had a gambling buddy (ie me). But I gave him advice and he didn't take it, so who's there to blame?
Moral of the story? Don't fuck with the system.
Update: this is the first week where I have won every bet I made. OK, 4 is not a large number but at least I can say I'm in the black again. I was a little scared when Sunderland almost clawed their way back against Chelsea, but it's alright now. All 4 relegation candidates have lost their matches. Newcastle were relegated courtesy of an own goal by Damien Duff. Some players would rather get relegated so they can play for different clubs and you wonder if Damien Duff is one of them. OK, my football season has ended on a high, and I am in the black again.
The last week of the Premiership and the Bundesliga. I missed 1 easy bet when Shaktar Donesk played Werder Bremen in the UEFA cup final. I should have bet on Shaktar to win. (As in win the competition, not win the match because after 90 minutes it was a draw.)
This week, I have the chance to recoup all my losses. I just have to win all my bets. This is not as difficult as it sounds, because, remember, I am in the habit of making safe(r) bets.
Hoffenheim are in better shape than they were during their slump. So I bet on them to eat 1.5 ball against Schalke 04 who were so crap 2 weeks ago that they let relegation candidate Mochengladbach beat them. As of now, Hoffenheim are tied 2-2 with Schalke 04, and can let 1 more goal in and I'm still safe.
Wolfsburg have to beat Werder Bremen in order to ensure they win the Bundesliga. So let them do it. Right now, in the middle of the 2nd half, they are leading 3-1. Wolfsburg winning their first Bundesliga! Imagine! What a change from the EPL where it's always the Big 4 taking the top 4 and the big 4 minus Liverpool winning.
I rely on Werder Bremen and Schalke 04 to play their parts because since they fucked me up before this is the least they owe me. (Edit: yesssss... I win my 2 bundesliga bets. I am safe!!!)
For tomorrow, I say that Chelsea beats Sunderland. Chelsea still have a mathematical chance of beating Liverpool to 2nd and they can only do that if they win. Also I bet on Everton to eat ball vs Fulham. Since when have Fulham been so powerful that they give ball to Everton? Well if the bookies want to be stupid let them be.
You know me, I know what I'm doing. I can win it all back. My luck is changing. I'm going to strike the big one. Imagine what we can do. One more try. This will be my last. I promise I will give it back to you.
OK, I'm not kidding, when I say I can win it all back. I've been keeping count and I'm around $10 behind. I only bet $10 at a time. I've wagered less than $500 so far this season and getting back $490 is not that bad, even though it's hardly profitable.
Unlike fat boy who puts in $100 at 1 shot. There was this time, middle of last week, when he asked me whether I wanted to go bet on Sunderland vs Portsmouth. Now you know, betting on 2 evenly matched teams is not my style because you never know what's going to happen. He also asked me to go bet on even goals for some S-league match. That's not my style because I only bet on 80%, 90% outcomes. He asked me to go down to Sing Pools to bet, I refused. I'm wary, almost every time I've (intentionally or otherwise) deviated from my own principles, I've been punished.
Next day he was $600 poorer. Now I feel a little sorry for him because he only started betting again because he had a gambling buddy (ie me). But I gave him advice and he didn't take it, so who's there to blame?
Moral of the story? Don't fuck with the system.
Update: this is the first week where I have won every bet I made. OK, 4 is not a large number but at least I can say I'm in the black again. I was a little scared when Sunderland almost clawed their way back against Chelsea, but it's alright now. All 4 relegation candidates have lost their matches. Newcastle were relegated courtesy of an own goal by Damien Duff. Some players would rather get relegated so they can play for different clubs and you wonder if Damien Duff is one of them. OK, my football season has ended on a high, and I am in the black again.
Homosexuality and me
OK first things first: I am as straight as an arrow. I'm just writing this because I feel that maybe some people out there won't understand.
I had commented before that I was a little surprised at how many of my colleagues at work, including people I like, are completely uncomfortable with gay people. I'll just put in some snippets of gay ppl I've encountered, or ppl who have talked to me about gayness.
Now my mother used to be very concerned about my mind being corrupt and I suppose, filial child that I am, never ever set her mind at ease. My mind is too open. You can't put a barrier and say, don't cross this line because it will eventually end up on the wrong side. But it won't stay there, because my mind is wandering all the time. I do not have an unhealthy fixation on sex, no matter what my friends think. I swear like a longshoreman. (Maybe I am one in real life.) It's partially her fault because she used to swear "bloody shit, male driver" whenever she drove us out in the car.
From other people's accounts, I have heard that my paternal grandfather has a very uncouth way with the language as well.
I consider myself a fairly open minded person who accepts ideas readily, until I have turned them over and found them to be illogical and unworthy. I have so far been unable to convince myself that being gay is wrong.
When I was a kid, I went to Thailand, and I saw a show by transsexuals. Later on my mother told me that those people lead pretty miserable lives. I asked why, she said, you know, they're not normal and they'll regret it. I thought, well they look nicer than they would have if they were men. As usual, I was smart enough to glimpse part of the truth. As it turns out, we wasted money going to Thailand when 10 years later you can go to Orchard Towers and see free shows every day.
I have always thought that homosexual people were good to make fun of. Good harmless fun, like people with a big nose, or somebody who's too tall or too short. Yes, these people are not normal but who the hell is normal anyway? We are all strange in a specific way. When Cantonese people greet each other, they say "lei ho mo?" I always end up sniggering.
The older generation is not very friendly towards gays, or at least they think of them as a disadvantaged minority. There was one time I picked up my grandmother at the hairdresser's. She said that the hairdresser's brother (a hairdresser himself) was a nice guy, a few years older than me, trained in the UK, and for some strange reason not married. I looked at him and my gaydar said : 8.5. I explained to her later that he's probably gay, and she said, "how can you talk that way about innocent people like him?"
I had a form teacher in Sec 1. Some people made fun of him behind his back for being fat and gay. We started a funny story that he lusted after his students. I suppose back then we didn't understand that he was a big shot in the Singapore drama scene.
I must have told you before the story where during Drama Feste, a house put up a production that dealt with homosexuality, and the judges symbolically judged it the winner. It was a shit play, and I should know because I was one of the extras. But I suppose that left a deep imprint on my mind. It's OK to poke fun (no pun intended) at gay people, make jokes about them fucking each other in the ass. But at the end of the day, you shouldn't discriminate against them. In a way, yes, the worst fears of some parents are true. If you teach in school that gay sex is normal, people will think that it is normal.
But the lesson we learnt was also a little more nuanced than that. We also learnt that gay people suffer more than normal people.
My best friend in sec 3/4 is gay. I didn't always know that. People picked on him because he was very weird and flamboyant. I didn't pick up his gay vibe, we always suspected him and we weren't sure. I sometimes felt a little strange around him but I always assumed that number 1 he's weird (which is true) and number 2 it's also weird that I have such a close friend of the same sex (which is true). After all he was so good with women. One of the lessons I learnt is: if a guy is very good with women, you have to suspect that he's gay.
I hung around him because he was very smart and always had very original opinions about everything, even though he had a very big chip on the shoulder and I felt that he was wasting his talent away. He went to another JC from us (another one of this chip on the shoulder antics) and got "engaged" to a JC classmate. It was probably a sham to mask the fact that he's gay. Nowadays when I bumped into him, he's always dressed outrageously, and he's always with his boyfriend.
He did tell me a few things about gay sex, like how to go about finding your G spot when you're a guy. (I didn't want to know). And how, when a guy fucks another guy in the ass, the guy who gets assfucked also enjoys it to some extent. (I also didn't want to know.) Unfortunately I have such a lust for knowledge that I was grateful that he told me. He also told me that Perrier bottles are a hidden code for identifying gay people. So years later, when a colleague had a Perrier bottle on his desk with the expiry date the same as when his bond ended, I had to laugh.
I credit him with giving me a lot of interesting ideas and I learnt a lot from him but we drifted apart because we're so different. I was not happy, not because I had feelings for him, but because it's not good to lose a friend when you didn't have that many to begin with in the first place.
I'm also a weird person but I like to keep my weirdness well hidden because it's always more outrageous when a seemingly normal person says something shocking. Why spoil the element of surprise by giving things away?
Another one of my gay friends, I knew him since pri 2, and he had such a blase attitude towards everything, his parents were so permissive. I remember the Chinese teacher throwing his file across the classroom and the pages flying everywhere. Not surprisingly he sucked at Chinese. I'm not close to him, and I was startled when he came out.
Another gay ex-classmate of mine was one of the most detested people in my cohort. He was unhygienic, dug his nose in public, always felt that people were out to get him. I think he had this attitude that everybody was out to get him because he had some special qualities that other people simply "get". By a twist of fate we were in BMT together. Unsurprisingly he couldn't complete the course.
There was another guy, the most brilliant mathematician in my cohort. He represented Singapore in the Maths Olympiad and got a silver medal, which is like having your test paper graded B. That is good because no Singaporean before him ever got a gold medal. He's completed his PhD now and he's lecturing around.
So I know 4 gay people fairly well, looked at them while growing up. It's difficult to see what they have in common. Smart ones, dumb ones, motivated ones, slack ones. Yes, maybe their being in a more permissive environment enabled them to get away with being gay. I think that with the exception of my BMT mate the rest of them are fairly well adjusted people. According to gossip reports, though, none of them make good soldiers. Maybe they are not the hyper masculine gay types.
There were a few classmates of mine who were uncomfortable with the fact that there are gay people in their midst. But those few know that they're in an environment that doesn't let them express their homophobia. They know if they open their mouths they will be criticised.
People I know from SAP schools are less westernised and I think they are less tolerant of gay people. Someone I knew didn't think that anybody in his school was gay. I asked him whether it was possible, the gay ones simply learnt to keep their mouths shut. He said it was possible.
I hardly knew any Americans who were gay in the US. During one of my years in the States, a gay person called Matthew Shepard was murdered for being gay, and there was widespread outrage on his behalf. My university is like most universities in the US, one of the most gay friendly places around. But there was once when I pointed out a gay parade to my first year roommate, a black guy. He's a very friendly and polite person, but he screwed up his face and said, "who gives a damn about them fags?" I suppose generally black people aren't very friendly towards gays.
One of the most paradoxical attitudes towards homosexuality comes from my sister. She's often very amused by male gays. She used to laugh when her classmates quoted Oscar Wilde, when EM Forster wrote about "Maurice", and when Lt Gruber from "'Allo 'Allo" always hit on Rene. But when I asked her about lesbians, her mood changed. "They're gross. Yuck." I asked her why is it so strange? She said, "lesbians can hit on me, and male gays can't. They're completely harmless to me."
So what do I think about homosexuals?
On a gut level, I am to some extent uncomfortable. I don't think I would welcome guys hitting on me. I have, with one or two exceptions, never had any homosexual behaviour. And those exceptions involved me trying to gross out somebody so that doesn't count as being sexual.
But I will tolerate them, that's not going to stop me being friends with them. I know many talented people, especially musicians, who are gay. I don't think that you should discriminate against them, and if you do, think about all the wasted talent.
I believe in being lax with them because I have heard about stories where people tried to convert them towards being heterosexual, they failed miserably and the gay people started getting miserable. I have been in love before and I know that people are miserable when they can't be with the people they love. I suppose it's the same with them. This is the primary reason why I am so lax with them - because they get a lot of shit (no pun intended) and they don't need any more from me (no pun intended either.)
There is no evidence that it is inherited, or natural, or simply learnt. Scientists can't make up their minds. But I believe that once a person is gay, it's extremely hard to convert them.
I'm a little uncomfortable with some liberal attitudes. There's a little smugness in the attitude, "I can tolerate gayness better than you can. I'm more enlightened than you are." That's also obnoxious.
Because of my liberal attitudes towards gays, I get to learn that certain people are gay, much earlier than others do. And, big mouth that I am, when I casually let this slip, there are noticeable gasps, and then people suddenly feel they have to act nonchalent, well, what to do. There's a bit of "are you sure?" And a lot of the time I'm never 100% sure but a lot of evidence is there.
What do I think about how my kids are taught? I want to impart my values to them, of course. My attitudes towards these things are not that simple and I have thought long and hard about them. It won't be as easy to teach them if they're not going to think as hard as I am. It's simple: gays are your friends, they are your brothers and sisters. Just don't ever be one of them.
You can be neutral towards gays. I think it's great that they are all fighting hard for their rights, it is heroic and it makes for great drama. But can I be neutral towards them to the point where I say "being gay is as good as being heterosexual?" Of course not. I believe that if you had to choose, you have to choose being heterosexual. Unless you're just being gay in order to rebel against society. That's a different matter, I have a soft spot for rebels.
Do I think that it's OK if people experimented with gay sex? I didn't want to try. (But then again, I didn't want to experiment with girls either. I guess I'm just cold and frigid.) What if you liked it? What if people became gay simply because they experimented and they grew to like it? I'm not going to be gay! I don't want to be gay. I don't want my dick touched by a guy! There was this guy who did it - he's not gay but he just wanted to piss me off. Well he pissed me off alright, I hit him back.
I believed that all human behaviour is a mix of natural and learnt. I didn't want to mess around with the learnt bit. I'm quite happy to lust after women, thank you very much.
I don't like people discriminating against gays. But sometimes they bring up the "homosexual life style" and I can understand why they're offended. It's not so much the "different ass every night" as it's the irresponsible hedonism. Playboys who are hetero are guilty of it too. You see, if homosexuality is a choice, and I'm not entirely convinced that it isn't, doesn't it mean that some people will choose homosexuality because they enjoy the carefree, hedonistic lifestyle? No kids to bring up, no permanent weddings, nothing to do but to spread funny diseases.
Lesbians? Duh. All guys love watching lesbians. Even the homophobic ones.
I think that the formula: there's nothing wrong with homosexuals, just don't be one is something that can find a lot of common ground with people. There are many people who take the view that homosexuality is a sin, but you shouldn't discriminate against them. Not surprisingly, a lot of Christians take this view. I have never understood whether Christians are judgemental or not. Some of them will say, "judge not lest ye be judged". Others will abhor the "moral relativism" of modern society and yearn for more traditional (ie judgemental) values.
There was a friend who agreed with me for this formula, and later on he added that while he felt that it was wrong to discriminate against homosexuals, he couldn't see how it was possible that homosexuality was not a sin. I put that formula not because I think there is anything wrong with homosexuality, or anything sinful. I chose not to be homosexual, if you can really choose these things. I would choose my kids to be not homosexual, not because homosexuality is wrong, but because they will be discriminated against, and they will suffer.
I read with dismay a lot of arguments advanced by Christians about why homosexuality is sinful. On one hand they say, "liberals cannot blithely say that just because they are permissive it is the morally superior position". That much I agree. But after that, they say, "There has to be values in the world. We can't just allow moral relativism to hold sway." Which implies that just because other people judged something to be completely harmless, and you judged that something to be sinful, that is the morally superior position. That's crazy.
It was never about permissiveness. It was never about saying, “we’re right because we can be so open minded”. That does not make sense. Just as there is no moral superiority to be inferred from permissiveness, there can also be no moral superiority to be inferred from the ability to make arbitrary judgements about human behaviour. You cannot condemn a form of human behaviour for nothing, and say, “see, we have higher moral standards”. Unless there are good, solid reasons.
When liberals say, “there is nothing wrong with homosexuals”, they are accused of not having values. When the same argument is reformulated to “it is wrong to discriminate against homosexuals, and it is wrong to label homosexuality as a sin”, they are accused of being judgemental and betraying a moral relativism they never had in the first place.
This is a clash of values. This is not a clash where one side has all the values and the other has nothing.
The distinction “hate the sin, not the sinner” does not make sense. We throw a thief into jail and we will love him there. That is still discrimination. If we say that homosexuality is a sin and we throw that person into jail, to me it is unjust, because homosexuality is not a sin.
Conversely, if we were to say that X is a sin, but we do not discriminate against X, that is also a travesty of justice. Would you let a murderer go scott-free? No. Once you pronounce an act a sin, you are discriminating against that act. Either it is a sin or it isn't. Love the sinner, yes. But punish him.
It is very clear. There is an incredible amount of confusion over the Christian position. They almost want their cake and to eat it to: first to follow the party line spelt out in the Bible, that homosexuality is a sin. But at the same time, lest they be accused of being hateful, they don't want to be seen as being discriminatory.
So my attitude? Yes, I'm liberal, but my liberalism is highly nuanced.
I had commented before that I was a little surprised at how many of my colleagues at work, including people I like, are completely uncomfortable with gay people. I'll just put in some snippets of gay ppl I've encountered, or ppl who have talked to me about gayness.
Now my mother used to be very concerned about my mind being corrupt and I suppose, filial child that I am, never ever set her mind at ease. My mind is too open. You can't put a barrier and say, don't cross this line because it will eventually end up on the wrong side. But it won't stay there, because my mind is wandering all the time. I do not have an unhealthy fixation on sex, no matter what my friends think. I swear like a longshoreman. (Maybe I am one in real life.) It's partially her fault because she used to swear "bloody shit, male driver" whenever she drove us out in the car.
From other people's accounts, I have heard that my paternal grandfather has a very uncouth way with the language as well.
I consider myself a fairly open minded person who accepts ideas readily, until I have turned them over and found them to be illogical and unworthy. I have so far been unable to convince myself that being gay is wrong.
When I was a kid, I went to Thailand, and I saw a show by transsexuals. Later on my mother told me that those people lead pretty miserable lives. I asked why, she said, you know, they're not normal and they'll regret it. I thought, well they look nicer than they would have if they were men. As usual, I was smart enough to glimpse part of the truth. As it turns out, we wasted money going to Thailand when 10 years later you can go to Orchard Towers and see free shows every day.
I have always thought that homosexual people were good to make fun of. Good harmless fun, like people with a big nose, or somebody who's too tall or too short. Yes, these people are not normal but who the hell is normal anyway? We are all strange in a specific way. When Cantonese people greet each other, they say "lei ho mo?" I always end up sniggering.
The older generation is not very friendly towards gays, or at least they think of them as a disadvantaged minority. There was one time I picked up my grandmother at the hairdresser's. She said that the hairdresser's brother (a hairdresser himself) was a nice guy, a few years older than me, trained in the UK, and for some strange reason not married. I looked at him and my gaydar said : 8.5. I explained to her later that he's probably gay, and she said, "how can you talk that way about innocent people like him?"
I had a form teacher in Sec 1. Some people made fun of him behind his back for being fat and gay. We started a funny story that he lusted after his students. I suppose back then we didn't understand that he was a big shot in the Singapore drama scene.
I must have told you before the story where during Drama Feste, a house put up a production that dealt with homosexuality, and the judges symbolically judged it the winner. It was a shit play, and I should know because I was one of the extras. But I suppose that left a deep imprint on my mind. It's OK to poke fun (no pun intended) at gay people, make jokes about them fucking each other in the ass. But at the end of the day, you shouldn't discriminate against them. In a way, yes, the worst fears of some parents are true. If you teach in school that gay sex is normal, people will think that it is normal.
But the lesson we learnt was also a little more nuanced than that. We also learnt that gay people suffer more than normal people.
My best friend in sec 3/4 is gay. I didn't always know that. People picked on him because he was very weird and flamboyant. I didn't pick up his gay vibe, we always suspected him and we weren't sure. I sometimes felt a little strange around him but I always assumed that number 1 he's weird (which is true) and number 2 it's also weird that I have such a close friend of the same sex (which is true). After all he was so good with women. One of the lessons I learnt is: if a guy is very good with women, you have to suspect that he's gay.
I hung around him because he was very smart and always had very original opinions about everything, even though he had a very big chip on the shoulder and I felt that he was wasting his talent away. He went to another JC from us (another one of this chip on the shoulder antics) and got "engaged" to a JC classmate. It was probably a sham to mask the fact that he's gay. Nowadays when I bumped into him, he's always dressed outrageously, and he's always with his boyfriend.
He did tell me a few things about gay sex, like how to go about finding your G spot when you're a guy. (I didn't want to know). And how, when a guy fucks another guy in the ass, the guy who gets assfucked also enjoys it to some extent. (I also didn't want to know.) Unfortunately I have such a lust for knowledge that I was grateful that he told me. He also told me that Perrier bottles are a hidden code for identifying gay people. So years later, when a colleague had a Perrier bottle on his desk with the expiry date the same as when his bond ended, I had to laugh.
I credit him with giving me a lot of interesting ideas and I learnt a lot from him but we drifted apart because we're so different. I was not happy, not because I had feelings for him, but because it's not good to lose a friend when you didn't have that many to begin with in the first place.
I'm also a weird person but I like to keep my weirdness well hidden because it's always more outrageous when a seemingly normal person says something shocking. Why spoil the element of surprise by giving things away?
Another one of my gay friends, I knew him since pri 2, and he had such a blase attitude towards everything, his parents were so permissive. I remember the Chinese teacher throwing his file across the classroom and the pages flying everywhere. Not surprisingly he sucked at Chinese. I'm not close to him, and I was startled when he came out.
Another gay ex-classmate of mine was one of the most detested people in my cohort. He was unhygienic, dug his nose in public, always felt that people were out to get him. I think he had this attitude that everybody was out to get him because he had some special qualities that other people simply "get". By a twist of fate we were in BMT together. Unsurprisingly he couldn't complete the course.
There was another guy, the most brilliant mathematician in my cohort. He represented Singapore in the Maths Olympiad and got a silver medal, which is like having your test paper graded B. That is good because no Singaporean before him ever got a gold medal. He's completed his PhD now and he's lecturing around.
So I know 4 gay people fairly well, looked at them while growing up. It's difficult to see what they have in common. Smart ones, dumb ones, motivated ones, slack ones. Yes, maybe their being in a more permissive environment enabled them to get away with being gay. I think that with the exception of my BMT mate the rest of them are fairly well adjusted people. According to gossip reports, though, none of them make good soldiers. Maybe they are not the hyper masculine gay types.
There were a few classmates of mine who were uncomfortable with the fact that there are gay people in their midst. But those few know that they're in an environment that doesn't let them express their homophobia. They know if they open their mouths they will be criticised.
People I know from SAP schools are less westernised and I think they are less tolerant of gay people. Someone I knew didn't think that anybody in his school was gay. I asked him whether it was possible, the gay ones simply learnt to keep their mouths shut. He said it was possible.
I hardly knew any Americans who were gay in the US. During one of my years in the States, a gay person called Matthew Shepard was murdered for being gay, and there was widespread outrage on his behalf. My university is like most universities in the US, one of the most gay friendly places around. But there was once when I pointed out a gay parade to my first year roommate, a black guy. He's a very friendly and polite person, but he screwed up his face and said, "who gives a damn about them fags?" I suppose generally black people aren't very friendly towards gays.
One of the most paradoxical attitudes towards homosexuality comes from my sister. She's often very amused by male gays. She used to laugh when her classmates quoted Oscar Wilde, when EM Forster wrote about "Maurice", and when Lt Gruber from "'Allo 'Allo" always hit on Rene. But when I asked her about lesbians, her mood changed. "They're gross. Yuck." I asked her why is it so strange? She said, "lesbians can hit on me, and male gays can't. They're completely harmless to me."
So what do I think about homosexuals?
On a gut level, I am to some extent uncomfortable. I don't think I would welcome guys hitting on me. I have, with one or two exceptions, never had any homosexual behaviour. And those exceptions involved me trying to gross out somebody so that doesn't count as being sexual.
But I will tolerate them, that's not going to stop me being friends with them. I know many talented people, especially musicians, who are gay. I don't think that you should discriminate against them, and if you do, think about all the wasted talent.
I believe in being lax with them because I have heard about stories where people tried to convert them towards being heterosexual, they failed miserably and the gay people started getting miserable. I have been in love before and I know that people are miserable when they can't be with the people they love. I suppose it's the same with them. This is the primary reason why I am so lax with them - because they get a lot of shit (no pun intended) and they don't need any more from me (no pun intended either.)
There is no evidence that it is inherited, or natural, or simply learnt. Scientists can't make up their minds. But I believe that once a person is gay, it's extremely hard to convert them.
I'm a little uncomfortable with some liberal attitudes. There's a little smugness in the attitude, "I can tolerate gayness better than you can. I'm more enlightened than you are." That's also obnoxious.
Because of my liberal attitudes towards gays, I get to learn that certain people are gay, much earlier than others do. And, big mouth that I am, when I casually let this slip, there are noticeable gasps, and then people suddenly feel they have to act nonchalent, well, what to do. There's a bit of "are you sure?" And a lot of the time I'm never 100% sure but a lot of evidence is there.
What do I think about how my kids are taught? I want to impart my values to them, of course. My attitudes towards these things are not that simple and I have thought long and hard about them. It won't be as easy to teach them if they're not going to think as hard as I am. It's simple: gays are your friends, they are your brothers and sisters. Just don't ever be one of them.
You can be neutral towards gays. I think it's great that they are all fighting hard for their rights, it is heroic and it makes for great drama. But can I be neutral towards them to the point where I say "being gay is as good as being heterosexual?" Of course not. I believe that if you had to choose, you have to choose being heterosexual. Unless you're just being gay in order to rebel against society. That's a different matter, I have a soft spot for rebels.
Do I think that it's OK if people experimented with gay sex? I didn't want to try. (But then again, I didn't want to experiment with girls either. I guess I'm just cold and frigid.) What if you liked it? What if people became gay simply because they experimented and they grew to like it? I'm not going to be gay! I don't want to be gay. I don't want my dick touched by a guy! There was this guy who did it - he's not gay but he just wanted to piss me off. Well he pissed me off alright, I hit him back.
I believed that all human behaviour is a mix of natural and learnt. I didn't want to mess around with the learnt bit. I'm quite happy to lust after women, thank you very much.
I don't like people discriminating against gays. But sometimes they bring up the "homosexual life style" and I can understand why they're offended. It's not so much the "different ass every night" as it's the irresponsible hedonism. Playboys who are hetero are guilty of it too. You see, if homosexuality is a choice, and I'm not entirely convinced that it isn't, doesn't it mean that some people will choose homosexuality because they enjoy the carefree, hedonistic lifestyle? No kids to bring up, no permanent weddings, nothing to do but to spread funny diseases.
Lesbians? Duh. All guys love watching lesbians. Even the homophobic ones.
I think that the formula: there's nothing wrong with homosexuals, just don't be one is something that can find a lot of common ground with people. There are many people who take the view that homosexuality is a sin, but you shouldn't discriminate against them. Not surprisingly, a lot of Christians take this view. I have never understood whether Christians are judgemental or not. Some of them will say, "judge not lest ye be judged". Others will abhor the "moral relativism" of modern society and yearn for more traditional (ie judgemental) values.
There was a friend who agreed with me for this formula, and later on he added that while he felt that it was wrong to discriminate against homosexuals, he couldn't see how it was possible that homosexuality was not a sin. I put that formula not because I think there is anything wrong with homosexuality, or anything sinful. I chose not to be homosexual, if you can really choose these things. I would choose my kids to be not homosexual, not because homosexuality is wrong, but because they will be discriminated against, and they will suffer.
I read with dismay a lot of arguments advanced by Christians about why homosexuality is sinful. On one hand they say, "liberals cannot blithely say that just because they are permissive it is the morally superior position". That much I agree. But after that, they say, "There has to be values in the world. We can't just allow moral relativism to hold sway." Which implies that just because other people judged something to be completely harmless, and you judged that something to be sinful, that is the morally superior position. That's crazy.
It was never about permissiveness. It was never about saying, “we’re right because we can be so open minded”. That does not make sense. Just as there is no moral superiority to be inferred from permissiveness, there can also be no moral superiority to be inferred from the ability to make arbitrary judgements about human behaviour. You cannot condemn a form of human behaviour for nothing, and say, “see, we have higher moral standards”. Unless there are good, solid reasons.
When liberals say, “there is nothing wrong with homosexuals”, they are accused of not having values. When the same argument is reformulated to “it is wrong to discriminate against homosexuals, and it is wrong to label homosexuality as a sin”, they are accused of being judgemental and betraying a moral relativism they never had in the first place.
This is a clash of values. This is not a clash where one side has all the values and the other has nothing.
The distinction “hate the sin, not the sinner” does not make sense. We throw a thief into jail and we will love him there. That is still discrimination. If we say that homosexuality is a sin and we throw that person into jail, to me it is unjust, because homosexuality is not a sin.
Conversely, if we were to say that X is a sin, but we do not discriminate against X, that is also a travesty of justice. Would you let a murderer go scott-free? No. Once you pronounce an act a sin, you are discriminating against that act. Either it is a sin or it isn't. Love the sinner, yes. But punish him.
It is very clear. There is an incredible amount of confusion over the Christian position. They almost want their cake and to eat it to: first to follow the party line spelt out in the Bible, that homosexuality is a sin. But at the same time, lest they be accused of being hateful, they don't want to be seen as being discriminatory.
So my attitude? Yes, I'm liberal, but my liberalism is highly nuanced.
Sunday, 17 May 2009
Football Betting Week 5 Part 2
I must be jinxed.
I was buying some bets for the weekend. There was a long queue at the counter. I put my entry form to the counter, and one of the bets had a problem. I returned it for a refund, and because the line was so long, I didn't go back and redo that bet.
One of the bets was for Berlin to eat ball vs Schalke. I would have won it. Another one was for Aston Villa to eat ball vs Middlesborough. I would have won that one too. Fat boy asked me if I wanted to bet on Fulham to beat Newcastle since the odds were around 3. I was quite wary of that, and I would have bet half my normal amount on that one. But I would have won that one too, even though the margin of victory was very narrow (0-1). He also asked me to bet on Everton vs West Ham. I didn't like it, but West Ham got 1 guy sent off and they lost.
Elsewhere, I was iffy about Wolfsburg beating Hannover, but they managed a 5-0 victory.
How did my bets do?
Stuttgart beat Cottbus. That was to be expected. Dortmund beat Bielefield, that was also to be expected. But I bet on Bremen to beat Karlsruhe, and they lost instead. I bet on Hamburg to beat Cologne. They also lost. What happened? Was I really unlucky?
Then it hit me: Both Bremen and Hamburg were involved in the UEFA cup. For the last 3 weeks, they have been playing midweek matches. So it doesn't really matter that both of them are still chasing Europe places in the league: they're tired. Why the fuck did I bet on teams which are tired? When am I going to stop making stupid mistakes?
I don't know if I'm going to bet next week, because so many of the issues have been settled already.
At least one of the bets I decided not to make was the right decision. I wasn't certain Bayern Munich would beat Hoffenheim, and in the end, they drew. Which means that Wolfsburg are now favourites to win the Bundesliga. It is incredible. This is a team which has never finished higher than 5th, in a town that was founded by the Nazis in 1938. OK, they have one of the best coaches in Felix Magath, and OK, this year Klinnsman screwed up Bayern Munich royally. But still, this is hell of an achievement for an upstart.
I was buying some bets for the weekend. There was a long queue at the counter. I put my entry form to the counter, and one of the bets had a problem. I returned it for a refund, and because the line was so long, I didn't go back and redo that bet.
One of the bets was for Berlin to eat ball vs Schalke. I would have won it. Another one was for Aston Villa to eat ball vs Middlesborough. I would have won that one too. Fat boy asked me if I wanted to bet on Fulham to beat Newcastle since the odds were around 3. I was quite wary of that, and I would have bet half my normal amount on that one. But I would have won that one too, even though the margin of victory was very narrow (0-1). He also asked me to bet on Everton vs West Ham. I didn't like it, but West Ham got 1 guy sent off and they lost.
Elsewhere, I was iffy about Wolfsburg beating Hannover, but they managed a 5-0 victory.
How did my bets do?
Stuttgart beat Cottbus. That was to be expected. Dortmund beat Bielefield, that was also to be expected. But I bet on Bremen to beat Karlsruhe, and they lost instead. I bet on Hamburg to beat Cologne. They also lost. What happened? Was I really unlucky?
Then it hit me: Both Bremen and Hamburg were involved in the UEFA cup. For the last 3 weeks, they have been playing midweek matches. So it doesn't really matter that both of them are still chasing Europe places in the league: they're tired. Why the fuck did I bet on teams which are tired? When am I going to stop making stupid mistakes?
I don't know if I'm going to bet next week, because so many of the issues have been settled already.
At least one of the bets I decided not to make was the right decision. I wasn't certain Bayern Munich would beat Hoffenheim, and in the end, they drew. Which means that Wolfsburg are now favourites to win the Bundesliga. It is incredible. This is a team which has never finished higher than 5th, in a town that was founded by the Nazis in 1938. OK, they have one of the best coaches in Felix Magath, and OK, this year Klinnsman screwed up Bayern Munich royally. But still, this is hell of an achievement for an upstart.
Saturday, 16 May 2009
Reading
I’m going to stop reading books for a while and see what happens. There’s this website where I logged down the number of books I’ve read. I’m about to hit the figure of 500.
There’s nothing wrong with spending a good part of your youth reading books. Everybody knows that male 20-somethings get kicked around like footballs. Women think that you’re stupid. Whereas if you look older they’re more likely to believe what you say, so long as you have that gravely voice. Even if you’re talking shit all the time.
I always was a slow reader. I put that down to my attention deficit disorder. My stream of thought is always highly non-linear. I can begin with point A, and end with point B, but my stream of thought from A to B could be 10 different paths. That’s OK, because it makes me more creative. But it’s a nightmare for people who have to follow that train of thought. Well, sorry, guys. So if there’s a page of words in front of me, and they have to go that way, it’s hard for me to tame my head and ask it to please follow that book.
OK, from young my parents did the right sort of things to me, read to me and stuff, and I also read books, although not many. I think they’ve always wanted me to read a lot of books, but I was never a good reader. I used to bluff my parents, they’d ask me what the book is about, I memorise the blurb, read 1 chapter, and pretend I’ve read everything.
There were other people getting ahead of me and everything. Perhaps it’s also that I never got the books that I was interested in. I never read enough books, never mastered the skill of finishing an entire book. If you put a 3-400 page book in front of me, I would probably take 6 months to finish it.
I didn’t really like the arts subjects at school. They were the big pains in asses because they involved so much rote memorising. They weren’t like the science subjects where you memorised the underlying logic, and suddenly the number of questions you could answer was unlimited. When I studied for my ‘O’ levels, I spent half of my time on 2 subjects – Geography and Literature. And this may surprise you guys – I only studied sample questions for the “Merchant of Venice”. I have never read the thing all the way through.
Yes, at this time I was a playwright. I merely pricked up my ears when my literature teacher was explaining to the class about literary devices. I watched TV and I saw how plots worked. I didn’t become a playwright by reading books because I hardly ever did that. Reading books does not make you a playwright. The ability to think and synthesise ideas does.
And in JC, I never really needed to read. I aced all my subjects at the ‘A’s, although I must remind everybody that around 1000 people of each cohort do that every single year. At the same time, I was intrigued by the people from the Arts stream. They seemed to be so much more fluid, confident and articulate. Of course, in the end I feel the way that scientists and engineers think is a great asset, even though it doesn’t get easily expressed.
At the same time, though, my sister started accumulating a huge amount of books. I think maybe her literature teacher was more inspiring than mine was. I had a literature teacher who genuinely cared for her subject and her students but at the same time she was too much of a misanthropist for anybody to ever like her very much. Seeing all those volumes somewhat fascinated me. I tried to read some novels, but I was such a slow and laborious reader. And I suppose that literature is still not a favourite subject of mine because I don’t really read novels well. Let’s make a distinction between literature and writing plays. In the former, you’re supposed to be good at listening to stories. In the latter, you’re supposed to be good at telling them. Being good at one is no guarantee that you’re good at the other.
Still, I persevered. I tried to read Henry James. A big mistake, I think. It took me forever to get through “Wings of a Dove”. Other books like “Catch 22” were easier. I didn’t catch what was going on in “Crime and Punishment”.
I ended up attending a good university. Some others may have slogged all their lives to end up there, I found myself there almost by accident. Although my major was Maths, I took the liberty to just indulge in anything that fascinated me. Looking back, this may not have been the best idea because there are some people out there who will never understand why I never focused on Just One Thing and made myself Very Good at it. Those people will never understand why I valued a broad education so much that I was willing to sacrifice depth for it.
Whatever it is, I ended up taking up a lot of reading courses. It was just as well that I was in a place with a very inhospitable climate, because I spent plenty of time indoors, just trying to get through a paragraph of inscrutable words. It was craziness. I had to endure mediocre grades for a few semesters, until magically 1 semester onwards, I just got an “A” or “A-“ in every arts subject I took on. Considering that there is grade inflation in the US unis, this is not fantastic. But I managed to take on and master a skill.
Suddenly, the written word changes its appearance. A 2-300 page book used to look like a wall, then it started looking like a garden hedge, and after that, a hurdle you just jump over. Years later, I would experience the same with running. First 5 km seems like more than enough running for a day. Eventually, the first 10km of your super long run seems to pass by without much thought.
And at the same time I was introduced to a whole world of ideas. My brain became the equivalent of a hot chick who had started growing tits. I delved into the great ideas. I took a course from every subject because the first course you take is the most difficult one, and the one that introduces you to the great ideas. I liked it. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, that was around 10 years ago, and one of those times in my life when I was truly happy.
After I graduated I knew a little from many different subjects but there was never enough time to flesh it all out. I kept plugging away, reading. Hoping one day that it would be useful to me. I don’t really know if it ever would. Maybe I knew, eventually that all my ideas would come head bang against reality. Or even sooner than that, my ideas would come head bang against my very limited ability to spread them to the wider world.
I spent a lot of time reading. First I read the books that I wanted to read. Then in the end, when they spilled onto the floor, I read the books so that I could clear some space for myself in my room. I think, today, I have spent the last 2-3 years reading. As in, when not working, eating or sleeping, reading. Reading in the MRT, in the toilet, even in the kopitiam when an EPL match is on, during the 89 minutes of the match when goals are not being scored.
It’s so easy to convince yourself that there’s something to reading. It feels like real work. You can tell yourself this is not idling (even though when you do it on a scale that I do it, it is). You can tell yourself, you don’t really know when it’s going to be useful. Even though, when you discuss the knowledge from your books with people, more than 90% of the time you will get blank stares. Unless that book is the bible or Harry Potter, more than 99.9% of the people would not have read what you are reading.
I could kid myself that a lot of the knowledge I got is relevant. In a way, I do read less arcane subjects. But it’s a slippery slope. I could read about the world economy in the 19th century and kid myself that it’s relevant. I could read about poverty in Africa and kid myself that other people would be interested. I could read about the invention of the internet and kid myself that 99.9% of the people who use the internet give a damn about how it was invented.
It was too easy to shut myself away from the world. I set up this blog and was largely successful in avoiding writing too much about my own books. So when you consider that I wrap myself in books most of the time, I’m really not telling you that much about my life.
Unlike other hobbies that you can get sick of, you can never really get tired of what you read. I only got tired, in the end, of shutting myself away from the world. It’s not an addiction, because it takes effort. But I knew this is unsustainable. I could be like a caterpillar in my own cocoon, eating like a pig, and forgetting that the whole point is that one day I’m supposed to be a butterfly.
Unfortunately the next few plans I have for myself involve reading: an IT education. A financial education. OK, fine. I’ll live outside of my cocoon for a while and see how it feels. For something that seems to be so cerebral, binging on books is rather mindless. You reduce the entirety of your life into a lot of book and a few other essentials. Who gives a shit about what friends you see and what you say to them. Who gives a shit about what clothes to wear, you just wear what you wore last year. Who gives a shit about family, they’re just a bunch of old farts who will never learn how to use a computer and you have to baby them like they babied you. You’re just thinking which 4 books to stuff into your bag when you go out. You're just waiting for the weekend to come so that you can make that pile of books smaller, so that you don't have to confine your reading to the MRT.
And sometimes I look in the mirror, what do I see? I see a guy with a mask staring out at me. He’s wearing a black cape, he’s breathing noisily through that mask. “Come with meeee to the daaaark side ….” And I say, does the dark side have any more geek porn for me? Complicated computer diagrams? Arcane academic dry language? Boring statistics about the quality of life in 1898? If so, I’m all for it! Yippeeee!
And so I delve into all of that, for the same reason I tell off-colour jokes – to make you cringe! There’s something hideous about all this excessive erudition. It makes your skin crawl and I know it!
OK, I’ve had enough of this. I’m paring it down.
I think: maybe over the last few months, as a result of my excessive reading, I think my brains got quite scrambled. They got quite scrambled too when I was in the uni, getting the drinking from the firehose treatment. You barely have the capability to process that amount of knowledge, and definitely don't have enough mental resources to do it on a meaningful level.
I once was at a bus stop near my house, and I looked across the road at a building I had probably seen hundreds of times. It was dusk, at twilight, and probably the building looked a little strange in that light. It was in a hospital, the same hospital where my sister and I were born and where my sister underwent a very very major surgery - an event that probably as much as any other influenced her choice of a career. It was an old building, a missionary building, and it had large windows, and stark yellow light pouring through them. What suddenly struck me was that it was probably the hospice I was looking at. A building where old people come to die. Just as the maternity ward is a special building because so many lives have begun in there, so is the hospice a special building too, because so many lives end in there.
I suppose, after all, there are new things that we can learn and see. Yes - the unpleasant fact of turning 30 is that all the novelties that adulthood has for you - the sudden freedom, the maturity, the mastery of your own life - all these no longer are novelties. From 30 onwards, it's basically the same shit over and over again, year after year. But I suppose there are new things to learn and see. It is possible that for me that a new adventure is there for me, not really around the corner, but growing closer day by day. Especially after I put down my old bloody books.
Question is: was I addicted to reading? I don't think so. What I was really addicted to, and probably still am addicted to, is procrastination. Reading is one of those things. If it wasn't reading it would have been something else. Blogging. Arcade games. Porn.
I'll probably write about procrastination some other time but not today.
There’s nothing wrong with spending a good part of your youth reading books. Everybody knows that male 20-somethings get kicked around like footballs. Women think that you’re stupid. Whereas if you look older they’re more likely to believe what you say, so long as you have that gravely voice. Even if you’re talking shit all the time.
I always was a slow reader. I put that down to my attention deficit disorder. My stream of thought is always highly non-linear. I can begin with point A, and end with point B, but my stream of thought from A to B could be 10 different paths. That’s OK, because it makes me more creative. But it’s a nightmare for people who have to follow that train of thought. Well, sorry, guys. So if there’s a page of words in front of me, and they have to go that way, it’s hard for me to tame my head and ask it to please follow that book.
OK, from young my parents did the right sort of things to me, read to me and stuff, and I also read books, although not many. I think they’ve always wanted me to read a lot of books, but I was never a good reader. I used to bluff my parents, they’d ask me what the book is about, I memorise the blurb, read 1 chapter, and pretend I’ve read everything.
There were other people getting ahead of me and everything. Perhaps it’s also that I never got the books that I was interested in. I never read enough books, never mastered the skill of finishing an entire book. If you put a 3-400 page book in front of me, I would probably take 6 months to finish it.
I didn’t really like the arts subjects at school. They were the big pains in asses because they involved so much rote memorising. They weren’t like the science subjects where you memorised the underlying logic, and suddenly the number of questions you could answer was unlimited. When I studied for my ‘O’ levels, I spent half of my time on 2 subjects – Geography and Literature. And this may surprise you guys – I only studied sample questions for the “Merchant of Venice”. I have never read the thing all the way through.
Yes, at this time I was a playwright. I merely pricked up my ears when my literature teacher was explaining to the class about literary devices. I watched TV and I saw how plots worked. I didn’t become a playwright by reading books because I hardly ever did that. Reading books does not make you a playwright. The ability to think and synthesise ideas does.
And in JC, I never really needed to read. I aced all my subjects at the ‘A’s, although I must remind everybody that around 1000 people of each cohort do that every single year. At the same time, I was intrigued by the people from the Arts stream. They seemed to be so much more fluid, confident and articulate. Of course, in the end I feel the way that scientists and engineers think is a great asset, even though it doesn’t get easily expressed.
At the same time, though, my sister started accumulating a huge amount of books. I think maybe her literature teacher was more inspiring than mine was. I had a literature teacher who genuinely cared for her subject and her students but at the same time she was too much of a misanthropist for anybody to ever like her very much. Seeing all those volumes somewhat fascinated me. I tried to read some novels, but I was such a slow and laborious reader. And I suppose that literature is still not a favourite subject of mine because I don’t really read novels well. Let’s make a distinction between literature and writing plays. In the former, you’re supposed to be good at listening to stories. In the latter, you’re supposed to be good at telling them. Being good at one is no guarantee that you’re good at the other.
Still, I persevered. I tried to read Henry James. A big mistake, I think. It took me forever to get through “Wings of a Dove”. Other books like “Catch 22” were easier. I didn’t catch what was going on in “Crime and Punishment”.
I ended up attending a good university. Some others may have slogged all their lives to end up there, I found myself there almost by accident. Although my major was Maths, I took the liberty to just indulge in anything that fascinated me. Looking back, this may not have been the best idea because there are some people out there who will never understand why I never focused on Just One Thing and made myself Very Good at it. Those people will never understand why I valued a broad education so much that I was willing to sacrifice depth for it.
Whatever it is, I ended up taking up a lot of reading courses. It was just as well that I was in a place with a very inhospitable climate, because I spent plenty of time indoors, just trying to get through a paragraph of inscrutable words. It was craziness. I had to endure mediocre grades for a few semesters, until magically 1 semester onwards, I just got an “A” or “A-“ in every arts subject I took on. Considering that there is grade inflation in the US unis, this is not fantastic. But I managed to take on and master a skill.
Suddenly, the written word changes its appearance. A 2-300 page book used to look like a wall, then it started looking like a garden hedge, and after that, a hurdle you just jump over. Years later, I would experience the same with running. First 5 km seems like more than enough running for a day. Eventually, the first 10km of your super long run seems to pass by without much thought.
And at the same time I was introduced to a whole world of ideas. My brain became the equivalent of a hot chick who had started growing tits. I delved into the great ideas. I took a course from every subject because the first course you take is the most difficult one, and the one that introduces you to the great ideas. I liked it. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, that was around 10 years ago, and one of those times in my life when I was truly happy.
After I graduated I knew a little from many different subjects but there was never enough time to flesh it all out. I kept plugging away, reading. Hoping one day that it would be useful to me. I don’t really know if it ever would. Maybe I knew, eventually that all my ideas would come head bang against reality. Or even sooner than that, my ideas would come head bang against my very limited ability to spread them to the wider world.
I spent a lot of time reading. First I read the books that I wanted to read. Then in the end, when they spilled onto the floor, I read the books so that I could clear some space for myself in my room. I think, today, I have spent the last 2-3 years reading. As in, when not working, eating or sleeping, reading. Reading in the MRT, in the toilet, even in the kopitiam when an EPL match is on, during the 89 minutes of the match when goals are not being scored.
It’s so easy to convince yourself that there’s something to reading. It feels like real work. You can tell yourself this is not idling (even though when you do it on a scale that I do it, it is). You can tell yourself, you don’t really know when it’s going to be useful. Even though, when you discuss the knowledge from your books with people, more than 90% of the time you will get blank stares. Unless that book is the bible or Harry Potter, more than 99.9% of the people would not have read what you are reading.
I could kid myself that a lot of the knowledge I got is relevant. In a way, I do read less arcane subjects. But it’s a slippery slope. I could read about the world economy in the 19th century and kid myself that it’s relevant. I could read about poverty in Africa and kid myself that other people would be interested. I could read about the invention of the internet and kid myself that 99.9% of the people who use the internet give a damn about how it was invented.
It was too easy to shut myself away from the world. I set up this blog and was largely successful in avoiding writing too much about my own books. So when you consider that I wrap myself in books most of the time, I’m really not telling you that much about my life.
Unlike other hobbies that you can get sick of, you can never really get tired of what you read. I only got tired, in the end, of shutting myself away from the world. It’s not an addiction, because it takes effort. But I knew this is unsustainable. I could be like a caterpillar in my own cocoon, eating like a pig, and forgetting that the whole point is that one day I’m supposed to be a butterfly.
Unfortunately the next few plans I have for myself involve reading: an IT education. A financial education. OK, fine. I’ll live outside of my cocoon for a while and see how it feels. For something that seems to be so cerebral, binging on books is rather mindless. You reduce the entirety of your life into a lot of book and a few other essentials. Who gives a shit about what friends you see and what you say to them. Who gives a shit about what clothes to wear, you just wear what you wore last year. Who gives a shit about family, they’re just a bunch of old farts who will never learn how to use a computer and you have to baby them like they babied you. You’re just thinking which 4 books to stuff into your bag when you go out. You're just waiting for the weekend to come so that you can make that pile of books smaller, so that you don't have to confine your reading to the MRT.
And sometimes I look in the mirror, what do I see? I see a guy with a mask staring out at me. He’s wearing a black cape, he’s breathing noisily through that mask. “Come with meeee to the daaaark side ….” And I say, does the dark side have any more geek porn for me? Complicated computer diagrams? Arcane academic dry language? Boring statistics about the quality of life in 1898? If so, I’m all for it! Yippeeee!
And so I delve into all of that, for the same reason I tell off-colour jokes – to make you cringe! There’s something hideous about all this excessive erudition. It makes your skin crawl and I know it!
OK, I’ve had enough of this. I’m paring it down.
I think: maybe over the last few months, as a result of my excessive reading, I think my brains got quite scrambled. They got quite scrambled too when I was in the uni, getting the drinking from the firehose treatment. You barely have the capability to process that amount of knowledge, and definitely don't have enough mental resources to do it on a meaningful level.
I once was at a bus stop near my house, and I looked across the road at a building I had probably seen hundreds of times. It was dusk, at twilight, and probably the building looked a little strange in that light. It was in a hospital, the same hospital where my sister and I were born and where my sister underwent a very very major surgery - an event that probably as much as any other influenced her choice of a career. It was an old building, a missionary building, and it had large windows, and stark yellow light pouring through them. What suddenly struck me was that it was probably the hospice I was looking at. A building where old people come to die. Just as the maternity ward is a special building because so many lives have begun in there, so is the hospice a special building too, because so many lives end in there.
I suppose, after all, there are new things that we can learn and see. Yes - the unpleasant fact of turning 30 is that all the novelties that adulthood has for you - the sudden freedom, the maturity, the mastery of your own life - all these no longer are novelties. From 30 onwards, it's basically the same shit over and over again, year after year. But I suppose there are new things to learn and see. It is possible that for me that a new adventure is there for me, not really around the corner, but growing closer day by day. Especially after I put down my old bloody books.
Question is: was I addicted to reading? I don't think so. What I was really addicted to, and probably still am addicted to, is procrastination. Reading is one of those things. If it wasn't reading it would have been something else. Blogging. Arcade games. Porn.
I'll probably write about procrastination some other time but not today.
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Football Betting Week 5
OK, Monchengladbach beat Schalke 04. That was a little unexpected. Every time I lose a bet, I keep the slip and I scribble a “moral of the story” behind it. My moral of the story is “do not bet against a team which is fighting relegation at the end of a season.”
I suppose the key word was “fighting relegation”. As opposed to “letting relegation happen to them”, as is the case of teams like Arminia Bielefield.
But some things are only apparent in hindsight. When I looked back at the match results, I found out that, yes, I did my homework. Monchengladbach were really coming off a bad run of form. And Schalke had been winning (except that they lost the match before Monchengladbach)
Because of the recent spate of mistakes and bad results, my account is now in the red.
In the middle of the week I had the opportunity to redeem myself.
Hamburg vs Bochum. 1 title contender (probably will be former title contender very soon) versus 1 relegation candidate with bad form. I won by betting on Hamburg to win.
Berlin vs Cologne. Another title contender versus another mediocre team with bad form. I won by betting on Berlin to win.
Munich vs Leverkusen. Another title contender versus another mediocre team. I don’t know why the odds are so low for this, but I bet anyway. Win.
Wigan vs Man U. Wigan are good but they’re not good enough to beat a steamroller who has to win this match to secure the title. Win again.
See, when I stick to safe and trusted methods, things go right for me. But I made a mistake. I listened to fat boy and bet on Young Lions to eat ball vs Super Reds. Is fat boy trying to screw me up? I lost, and lost back almost all the profits from the 4 winning bets.
Well I’m on my way back towards the black anyway, so I shouldn’t complain.
Actually I could complain. There were a few other matches whose results seemed possible to predict. Werder Bremen, after a lot of consistency, is hitting a run of form, and they thrashed Eintracht Frankfurt. I’d have settled for the win and collected money. My hunch (proved correct) was that Stuttgart was going to beat Schalke 04. You could say, on hindsight, of course Monchengladbach would win Cottbus, but given it was settle by 1 last minute goal, maybe it was still too much of a risk. And given that Hoffenheim is looking good again, you can bet on it to beat a relegation candidate Bielefield.
But I suppose, since I had earlier judged those matches too risky to play, I should stick to my decision no matter what.
This weekend, this is contingent on the odds. I will bet on Dortmund to beat Bielefield, Stuttgart to beat Cottbus, Bremen to beat Karlsruhe, Hamburg to beat Cologne.
Wolfsburg should beat Hannover, but since Hannover is in such good form of late, I will pass that.
Man U are playing Arsenal. Ordinarily, I would say, Arsenal’s defence is in such bad shape, on current form they will lose to Man U. But since only a draw would see them get back their EPL, it’s not good to bet on that one.
Liverpool, however, should still be too strong for WBA (even though most likely they no longer have anything to play for.) Similarly for Chelsea vs Blackburn, you just can’t see any other possibility, other than a Chelsea win.
I suppose the key word was “fighting relegation”. As opposed to “letting relegation happen to them”, as is the case of teams like Arminia Bielefield.
But some things are only apparent in hindsight. When I looked back at the match results, I found out that, yes, I did my homework. Monchengladbach were really coming off a bad run of form. And Schalke had been winning (except that they lost the match before Monchengladbach)
Because of the recent spate of mistakes and bad results, my account is now in the red.
In the middle of the week I had the opportunity to redeem myself.
Hamburg vs Bochum. 1 title contender (probably will be former title contender very soon) versus 1 relegation candidate with bad form. I won by betting on Hamburg to win.
Berlin vs Cologne. Another title contender versus another mediocre team with bad form. I won by betting on Berlin to win.
Munich vs Leverkusen. Another title contender versus another mediocre team. I don’t know why the odds are so low for this, but I bet anyway. Win.
Wigan vs Man U. Wigan are good but they’re not good enough to beat a steamroller who has to win this match to secure the title. Win again.
See, when I stick to safe and trusted methods, things go right for me. But I made a mistake. I listened to fat boy and bet on Young Lions to eat ball vs Super Reds. Is fat boy trying to screw me up? I lost, and lost back almost all the profits from the 4 winning bets.
Well I’m on my way back towards the black anyway, so I shouldn’t complain.
Actually I could complain. There were a few other matches whose results seemed possible to predict. Werder Bremen, after a lot of consistency, is hitting a run of form, and they thrashed Eintracht Frankfurt. I’d have settled for the win and collected money. My hunch (proved correct) was that Stuttgart was going to beat Schalke 04. You could say, on hindsight, of course Monchengladbach would win Cottbus, but given it was settle by 1 last minute goal, maybe it was still too much of a risk. And given that Hoffenheim is looking good again, you can bet on it to beat a relegation candidate Bielefield.
But I suppose, since I had earlier judged those matches too risky to play, I should stick to my decision no matter what.
This weekend, this is contingent on the odds. I will bet on Dortmund to beat Bielefield, Stuttgart to beat Cottbus, Bremen to beat Karlsruhe, Hamburg to beat Cologne.
Wolfsburg should beat Hannover, but since Hannover is in such good form of late, I will pass that.
Man U are playing Arsenal. Ordinarily, I would say, Arsenal’s defence is in such bad shape, on current form they will lose to Man U. But since only a draw would see them get back their EPL, it’s not good to bet on that one.
Liverpool, however, should still be too strong for WBA (even though most likely they no longer have anything to play for.) Similarly for Chelsea vs Blackburn, you just can’t see any other possibility, other than a Chelsea win.
Sunday, 10 May 2009
Football Betting Week 4
Not a very good week for me when it comes to betting. In the middle of the week I bet on Hull to eat ball vs Aston Villa and that was OK. I also bet on the Young Lions to win against a Cambodian football side and I lost. I simply did not do my homework on that one.
After that I resisted invitations from fat boy to bet on matches in mid week. The Champion's League semi finals - you never knew what was going to happen in them. Good to watch, bad to bet on.
Anyway, here are the results from this week's betting:
I got Bochum to eat ball against Hertha Berlin. This is bad: Berlin beat Bochum by 2 goals. I suppose I read it somewhere that Berlin seldom beats any team by more than 1 goal, but if I didn't think highly of Bochum, then I shouldn't have bet on them to eat ball.
Hoffenheim vs Cologne was another unexpected result. I bet on Cologne to eat ball vs Hoffenheim. It's true that Hoffenheim have lousy form, but if I did more homework I would have realised that Cologne also have lousy form. In the end, I also lost this bed. Hoffenheim beat Cologne by 2 goals.
Good old reliable Dortmund beat Karlsruhe for me. That was good. You could also count on Liverpool to beat West Ham. (I thought this would be close, but 3 goals? Damn.) Stoke to eat ball vs Hull - can you imagine Hull thrashing Stoke? (In the event, Stoke won. )
There are some bets that I'm glad I didn't make. Like, Leverkusen to win against Bielefield. (They didn't.) Or for Portsmouth to eat ball vs Blackburn. Or Wigan to win against WBA. Now is a very bad time to bet against WBA because suddenly they're improving, suddenly they're the team who doesn't want to be relegated.
There's 1 more bet I made. That is for Schalke 04 to beat Monchengladbach. If I win that bet, I will be even for this week. Otherwise, I will either have to impose stricter discipline on myself and have a stricter criterion for the bets I'm willing to make, or review whether or not my strategy is working at all. Because this week could be the week that I wipe out all the profits I've made over the last few weeks.
After that I resisted invitations from fat boy to bet on matches in mid week. The Champion's League semi finals - you never knew what was going to happen in them. Good to watch, bad to bet on.
Anyway, here are the results from this week's betting:
I got Bochum to eat ball against Hertha Berlin. This is bad: Berlin beat Bochum by 2 goals. I suppose I read it somewhere that Berlin seldom beats any team by more than 1 goal, but if I didn't think highly of Bochum, then I shouldn't have bet on them to eat ball.
Hoffenheim vs Cologne was another unexpected result. I bet on Cologne to eat ball vs Hoffenheim. It's true that Hoffenheim have lousy form, but if I did more homework I would have realised that Cologne also have lousy form. In the end, I also lost this bed. Hoffenheim beat Cologne by 2 goals.
Good old reliable Dortmund beat Karlsruhe for me. That was good. You could also count on Liverpool to beat West Ham. (I thought this would be close, but 3 goals? Damn.) Stoke to eat ball vs Hull - can you imagine Hull thrashing Stoke? (In the event, Stoke won. )
There are some bets that I'm glad I didn't make. Like, Leverkusen to win against Bielefield. (They didn't.) Or for Portsmouth to eat ball vs Blackburn. Or Wigan to win against WBA. Now is a very bad time to bet against WBA because suddenly they're improving, suddenly they're the team who doesn't want to be relegated.
There's 1 more bet I made. That is for Schalke 04 to beat Monchengladbach. If I win that bet, I will be even for this week. Otherwise, I will either have to impose stricter discipline on myself and have a stricter criterion for the bets I'm willing to make, or review whether or not my strategy is working at all. Because this week could be the week that I wipe out all the profits I've made over the last few weeks.
Saturday, 9 May 2009
The real significance of the Gay Debate
When reading a book about the US Supreme Court, I read: “there are 2 types of cases that go to the Supreme Court. There are abortion cases and there is everything else.”
In this sense, Singapore is more liberal than the US. Everybody has a right to get an abortion. It is not something that is bitterly fought over. Unlike homosexuality.
When we look back on the late noughties, we might find that homosexuality is one of the big issues of Singapore. It is almost the first issue to be dealt with in a democratic manner. The casino issue was not a democratic decision. The government knew they were going to build it, no matter what, and it was simply a matter of them promising that they would take appropriate measures to prevent problem gambling from being an issue for Singapore citizens. The rest of the world, on the other hand, is free to fuck up their lives however they want.
Anyway, this issue was one that got seriously debated about in parliament. An NMP (and he’s only a couple of years older than me) first raised the motion to get an archaic anti-sodomy law struck down. The motion didn’t get passed but there was a lot of debate over the issue and nasty words exchanged. There always was a lot of gay activism in Singapore but it was mostly underground. Now everything’s come to the surface.
Gay activism has been around since at least the early 90s and I saw quite a bit of it in my school. I think at that time it was basically assumed that it was a progressive idea that we accept all Singaporeans as they are, gay or straight, that this idea would take root and eventually people would accept things as they are.
That was not the whole story. I don’t really think that Chinese culture is homophobic. There has never been an explicit philosophy that accepts something like that but never an explicit condemnation of it either. Unlike western culture we don’t glorify the “real man” because so many senior government posts have gone to eunuchs. There is also the Dream of the Red Chambers, which depicts some homosexual activity. No problem with that either. Should we be surprised that Lee Ang is the director of “Brokeback Mountain”? But that’s not even his best homosexual movie. That honour should go to “The Wedding Banquet”.
It is worthwhile to go back to “The Wedding Banquet” because I see that as the typically Chinese attitude towards homosexuality. The son goes to the US and has a gay lover. The father thinks that the son’s going to marry a woman. Later on he has a stroke, and eventually we know that that’s when he started realizing that his son is gay. But at the end of the day, his love for his son triumphs and he accepts everything.
You see, it’s incidents like this where I feel that Chinese culture is very practical and secular. I feel that Chinese people are both highly conservative and highly practical, but in the end, the practical side will win.
I don’t think the government has any definite stand on this. It has always been the style to seek consensus on issues, and if there are issues which are controversial enough that you can’t really have a consensus, it will not act. Maybe people will think of LKY as a dictator, but he is first and foremost a pragmatist. His attitude, revealed in a IHT interview is “eventually people will come round to accepting this”. Given that the speaker is an 80 something year old man, you can translate this as follows: “I’ll be dead and gone by the time this issue is resolved so don’t bother me with this.”
He thinks that maybe 20-30% of Singaporeans have accepted this. He also thinks that as Singapore gets more cosmopolitan, people with their cosmopolitan attitudes will come round to the idea. Apparently he has less patience with the fundamentalist Christian groups, who are not pragmatic.
His own views? He’s a peranakan. Men are not really men, women are not really women. They don’t really care about homosexuals.
For me they have always been around, like the sun has always risen. Why have a view on things that always exist? Even if you think they are weeds, if you pluck them away they will grow back. It is stupid and wasteful to try to eradicate them.
What do the Muslims think about this? Well the way things have gone since 9/11, they have been very quiet about their religion. If they are moderates, and I believe most Singaporean Malays are moderates, you will not have anything to say about the fundamentalist Christians. There is nothing great about what Islam has to say about homosexuals. If you are an extremist, then you’d be better off giving night classes to aspiring terrorists, and not open your mouth and alert the ISD to your presence.
There has been a lot said about the AWARE saga. The new guard has a point when they say that AWARE needs to be rejuvenated. But not like that!
In a few years’ time, though, what is really significant about this incident is that democracy is taking place in Singapore. You actually get to see people taking sides over an issue, arguing, thinking through their arguments. You may or may not agree with them, but you will engage. When you have studied enough history, you start to realize that there is no such thing as the One Great Truth, because peoples’ attitudes towards things have varied so much over large periods of time that such a notion (of a One Great Truth) frankly looks a little ridiculous. What is right is in large part influenced by the prevailing norm.
People have argued that repressive laws in Singapore are mainly responsible for there not being much of a democratic movement here. But that’s only one aspect. The fact is that you cannot have a democracy without a critical mass of people, a sophisticated and educated bunch thinking about issues, and then voicing their opinions on it. This iterated process of forming and opinion, listening to other people and then revising your opinion is actually more crucial to democracy right now.
So even if Singapore were to repeal all the detention without trial clauses and relax all constraints on the media, there wouldn’t be democracy. As the invaders of Iraq learnt, democracy doesn’t automatically come to a population just because you mandate it. (such a contradiction – how do you mandate a democracy?) It has to be bottom up. And bottom up movements are slow and messy.
So I think in the long term, this issue, ironically provoked by a small group of the Christian Right in Singapore, is one of the things that will eventually lead to democracy being practiced in Singapore, more so than a Chee Soon Juan type clown facing off with the policemen in Hong Lim. Democracy is not a political movement. It is a process.
I watched the situation from my laptop. The Online Citizen were reporting live from Suntec. It was great. For the last 2 weeks, my old secondary school form teacher, who is a bit of an activist, had been putting up plenty of articles urging the ladies to go down and help oust the Thio Su Mien faction. I think there has been a lot of canvassing going on over the last 2 weeks.
Up till the end, I wasn't sure which side was going to win. Ostensibly the government doesn't take sides on this, but there are signs. First, it was the Straits Times who broke the news. Straits Times does not break news unless somebody who is somebody winks at the editor.
Then you had statements by Vivian Balakrishnan who says that he is very displeased at how AWARE is fighting among themselves. Does he mean that he's displeased at both sides or displeased at the side who started the fight? Hmmmm. Then he said that AWARE should be a "rainbow coalition". Does that mean that he supports the side who is more inclusive? (ie the old guard). Hmmmm... And one of my friends commented on the rainbow innuendo - the rainbow is the symbol of gay pride. (The way that se in Chinese means both "colour" and "lust").
But most importantly, I think that the government is probably very displeased at how a christian fundamentalist group managed to hijack AWARE. The government is very clear about this: Singapore government is secular. Keep religion out of everything. If they could make Singapore a-religious they would. Now a christian fundamentalist group wants to test the system
Do you not know that if the Singapore government is sick and tired of you it means that you are fucked? They put up with TT Durai for years because they were afraid of the consequences - what would happen if TT Durai was exposed. Until one day they had enough, end of story, TT Durai is fucked. Now the feminist mentor has stepped over the line, well, she's fucked too.
But the turnout was incredible. They managed to get 2000 people to turn up at the AWARE EGM. Of course poor Josie Lau has to be the one footing the bill. From the reports, the atmosphere was electric. Somebody bitched that Josie Lau had exceeded her 3 minutes. At one point, the Thio Su Mien faction told people to "shut up and sit down". There are a few phrases that just become symptomatic of the occasion and it seems that "shut up and sit down" is it.
Because "shut up and sit down" is the way the Thio Su Mien exco have been running the show. They cut the non-TSM faction out of the loop, they make their decisions in closed rooms, they dress their decisions in the fancy corporate- speak, they are not transparent about their intentions.
In the end, people are offended that AWARE, an organisation that speaks for women's rights, are taken over by a faction that speaks out against the rights of gay people. They are offended that AWARE, for many years a bastion of liberal thought in a (probably conservative) PAP system, are taken over by conservatives. They are offended that the TSM faction have brought their Christian ideologies into a secular organisation. They are offended that the TSM faction are so sneaky and underhanded. And arrogant.
But before today, the question on my mind, and other peoples' minds, are - do Singaporeans care enough to turn up at the EGM? Well we know the answer. We knew already that the good church going folk of Church of Our Saviour are going to turn up. They were part of the well organised system which had taken over AWARE, and had more than 700 votes. It was a question of how many pro-old faction people were going to turn up. In the end, more than 1400 did.
Who were they? I don't know, but thank goodness they turned up.
There was still some uncertainty towards the very end about whether the TSM faction were going to concede defeat. They were thinking about how to challenge the results of the vote. Legally, they didn't have to go. A vote of no-confidence may not be binding. But at the end of the day, they must have realised that if they had stayed on, they were as good as lame ducks. So they left.
Alfian said this about Singapore: if you care too much about Singapore, it will first break your spirit and then it will break your heart. But I have always felt that he didn't have enough patience.
That night I had a dream. I dreamt that AWARE had changed their name to AROUSE, and voted me in as the first "fully erected male member". It was a great dream.
Anyway, in 1973 the US Supreme Court voted to legalise abortion, or rather the ruling was that states may not pass laws to legalise abortion. Unlike in Singapore, abortion is something that strongly influences whether a couple stays together or not. As in the homosexuality issue, one of the main concerns is about family values.
Like the abortion issue, this is also something highly controversial that will never go away. The gay issue is being fought right now in other parts of the world, not just Singapore. Considering that Roe vs Wade was more than 30 years ago, it is somewhat surprising that it's still being fought over in the US, but it is. This gay issue has the potential to be something polarising for Singapore in the years to come.
Sunday, 3 May 2009
Football Betting week 3
I think it can be difficult to bet when you are making snap decisions. Last week I was careless and lost money. In the middle of the week, I made 2 bets that were in hindsight quite stupid. I was at a 4D booth with a friend, I felt like I had to make a bet, so I bet on Barcelona to beat Chelsea.
At that time it made sense. Barcelona were the most irresistible attacking side in Europe. Chelsea were on the tail end of a difficult season. Barcelona were at home. But there were a few things that made things not so certain. First, Chelsea's new coach is a consistent overachiever. Then, Chelsea are always a side where you just don't easily bet against them. Fat boy had bet on Liverpool to beat Chelsea even though I advised him not to and he lost. Now it was my turn to make the mistake of betting against Chelsea.
So I lost. The other bet I made was for Barcelona to win the Spanish league. I thought it was a shoo in because the odds were so low. The I found out to my horror: Real Madrid are breathing down Barcelona's necks. And Barcelona and Real Madrid are playing each other even as I speak. Should Real Madrid beat Barcelona, unlikely as this may be, Real Madrid will be 1 point behind Barcelona, and after that it's not certain that Barcelona will win the Spanish league. I'm nervous, because Real Madrid are on a long winning streak, and have had 1 whole week to rest, and Barcelona spent Tuesday night banging their heads against Chelsea without making them crack.
So this week I got back to basics. So far so good.
I took West Ham to eat ball against Stoke. After all, who ever heard of Stoke winning by 2 goals against anybody? (Yes they did so last week but Sunderland are Sunderland). So West Ham duly obliged, and even won the game.
I took Tottenham to win against WBA. Yes they melted down last week against Man U but they're too strong for WBA, and even if they won 1-0 against WBA, I'll take that.
I bet on Wolfsburg to win against Hoffenheim. I stopped backing Hoffenheim. Yes, it was very romantic how they topped the Bundesliga in winter but they're out of steam. And Wolfsburg need to win the league don't they? But I was unsure about this and I only bet $5 so didn't collect much.
I bet on Dortmund to win against Frankfurt. Dortmund are on a hot streak and have won their last 6 league matches. Yes, betting on teams with a good hot streak is a little dangerous because you don't know when they're going to get tired of winning but you work on the best infor you have. Surprisingly the odds quoted were quite long so I made money on this one.
I also bet on Stuttgart to win Bielefield. The motherfuckers let me down, it was a 2-2 draw. And the bloody referee, he gave Bielefield a penalty, otherwise they would have lost. Ah well, you have to lose some time so never mind.
I thought that Man U were going to win against Middlesborough but I didn't want to bet on them, since they're tired from whacking up Arsenal on Wednesday. I thought that Arsenal were going to win against Portsmouth but I didn't want to bet on them since they're tired from getting whacked up by Man U on Wednesday. So what happens? Man U and Arsenal win. Well life's like that, I made a decision not to bet, I don't complain.
Tomorrow I take Berlin to eat ball vs Hamburg and should be no problem since Hamburg had to play in Europe and Berlin don't have to. Also I take Liverpool to beat Newcastle and should be no problem since they're so good at the moment and have to win anyway. So wish me luck.
I should stick to my betting strategy. Keep a cool head, put your money down, at the end of the day, collect your money back, don't get a heart attack half way. Don't complain about collecting scraps because that's what you bargained for.
Edit 1: My "Barcelona will win La Liga" bet is safe. Barcelona has just thrashed Real Madrid in El Classico.
Edit 2: Liverpool has fulfilled their part of the bargain by thrashing Newcastle. Hertha Berlin has drawn against Hamburg. It's been a good week and I just made back what I lost in that Barcelona bet.
At that time it made sense. Barcelona were the most irresistible attacking side in Europe. Chelsea were on the tail end of a difficult season. Barcelona were at home. But there were a few things that made things not so certain. First, Chelsea's new coach is a consistent overachiever. Then, Chelsea are always a side where you just don't easily bet against them. Fat boy had bet on Liverpool to beat Chelsea even though I advised him not to and he lost. Now it was my turn to make the mistake of betting against Chelsea.
So I lost. The other bet I made was for Barcelona to win the Spanish league. I thought it was a shoo in because the odds were so low. The I found out to my horror: Real Madrid are breathing down Barcelona's necks. And Barcelona and Real Madrid are playing each other even as I speak. Should Real Madrid beat Barcelona, unlikely as this may be, Real Madrid will be 1 point behind Barcelona, and after that it's not certain that Barcelona will win the Spanish league. I'm nervous, because Real Madrid are on a long winning streak, and have had 1 whole week to rest, and Barcelona spent Tuesday night banging their heads against Chelsea without making them crack.
So this week I got back to basics. So far so good.
I took West Ham to eat ball against Stoke. After all, who ever heard of Stoke winning by 2 goals against anybody? (Yes they did so last week but Sunderland are Sunderland). So West Ham duly obliged, and even won the game.
I took Tottenham to win against WBA. Yes they melted down last week against Man U but they're too strong for WBA, and even if they won 1-0 against WBA, I'll take that.
I bet on Wolfsburg to win against Hoffenheim. I stopped backing Hoffenheim. Yes, it was very romantic how they topped the Bundesliga in winter but they're out of steam. And Wolfsburg need to win the league don't they? But I was unsure about this and I only bet $5 so didn't collect much.
I bet on Dortmund to win against Frankfurt. Dortmund are on a hot streak and have won their last 6 league matches. Yes, betting on teams with a good hot streak is a little dangerous because you don't know when they're going to get tired of winning but you work on the best infor you have. Surprisingly the odds quoted were quite long so I made money on this one.
I also bet on Stuttgart to win Bielefield. The motherfuckers let me down, it was a 2-2 draw. And the bloody referee, he gave Bielefield a penalty, otherwise they would have lost. Ah well, you have to lose some time so never mind.
I thought that Man U were going to win against Middlesborough but I didn't want to bet on them, since they're tired from whacking up Arsenal on Wednesday. I thought that Arsenal were going to win against Portsmouth but I didn't want to bet on them since they're tired from getting whacked up by Man U on Wednesday. So what happens? Man U and Arsenal win. Well life's like that, I made a decision not to bet, I don't complain.
Tomorrow I take Berlin to eat ball vs Hamburg and should be no problem since Hamburg had to play in Europe and Berlin don't have to. Also I take Liverpool to beat Newcastle and should be no problem since they're so good at the moment and have to win anyway. So wish me luck.
I should stick to my betting strategy. Keep a cool head, put your money down, at the end of the day, collect your money back, don't get a heart attack half way. Don't complain about collecting scraps because that's what you bargained for.
Edit 1: My "Barcelona will win La Liga" bet is safe. Barcelona has just thrashed Real Madrid in El Classico.
Edit 2: Liverpool has fulfilled their part of the bargain by thrashing Newcastle. Hertha Berlin has drawn against Hamburg. It's been a good week and I just made back what I lost in that Barcelona bet.
Saturday, 2 May 2009
Gran Torino
I watched "Gran Torino" and had a good deal on it. The new cinema is built in a funky new building called Iluma. What I like about that building is the funky exterior which is a permanent light show (and hence the name). It's also got funky big glass doors. The big solid American type that I saw in uh America. Of course American stuff is usually big and impressive and somehow always breaks down in the end. But you never know.
So the good deal - all the tickets were going at $6. There aren't that many good shows these days. I've been watching quite a few Clint Eastwood pictures lately. Somehow there are a few directors out there who work until past 80. Like Akira Kurosawa directing "Ran". Or Antonioni (but maybe they started late.) So Clint Eastwood is enjoying a late career renaissance, that's good. I suppose he has always been making solid films that have somehow escaped the attention of the critics who automatically equated being macho with shallowness during the 70s and 80s. In 1992, he made a picture "The Unforgiven", and it got a very good critical reception. In the last few years, he has a solid record: "Mystic River", "Million Dollar Baby", "Changeling", "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Flag of our Fathers".
I feel that his late flowering reflects his self knowledge that he's almost alone in his own genre of making macho but thoughtful films. Manhood isn't really what it used to be, for better or worse. These days, action heroes are more the geeks who are equally good at embracing technology, typified by Ethan Hunt. Brilliant, resourceful, but a user of brainwork as much as muscle work. Even Daniel Craig as James Bond looks like he gets his muscles from the gym rather than from manual labour. Then you have a whole plethora of cartoon characters which take the seriousness out of beating the shit out of another guy.
I feel that old school macho attitudes are more a matter of strength of character. Yes, we can admire the modern action heroes because they are excellent problem solvers, engineers, witty, nimble, graceful. But Clint Eastwood harks back to a more old school form of grit. His characters do not lounge around at stylish bars and sip fancy cocktails. They don't run around with the latest laptops and technology. They don't promote a millennial, consumerist lifestyle, or wear the latest fashion. This is not to denigrate the new generation, because the new generation have a different, equally challenging set of demands placed upon them, but people like Clint Eastwood don't really exist any more.
The Clint Eastwood cities are not the ultra modern, stylish and futuristic cities that you see in James Bond / Vin Diesel movies. You don't have MI 3 in Shanghai or Rome, Casino Royale in Venice and some funky Monte Carlo swanky place. It's not some old communist capital which has been taken over by swanky sleek capitalism designer stuff.
His proper place is the decaying urban metropolitan. His vision of America is still stuck in the 70s and the 80s, where America is questioning and lamenting its declining place in the world, when it was paling next to newly confident places like Germany, Japan and the Asian Tigers. Its the urban ghetto, which has always existed, and gang wars co-exist with entire communities and families bringing up children.
If Gran Torino is a moral tale, it involves the struggle for the soul of a community. Maybe a fight between good and evil, even though it is more true to say that all sides have different degrees of shadiness.
Spoilers from now on.
I was fucking stupid. I bought tickets, and thinking I had 2 hours to burn, walked over to a bar and had a beer. Then I took too long for dinner. By the time I realised it was too late, I missed 10 minutes of the film. I had to rely on movie reviews and youtube to keep me updated on what I had missed. Luckily this film is not "Crimson Gold" where all the excitement takes place in the first 10 minutes.
This has enough action to satisfy Eastwood aficionados. But Eastwood movies are also about character. They are a lot like classic samurai films, where the character knows that there is a duel tomorrow, there's going to be a fight and then they're doing a lot of thinking, weighing up all their moral choices. You could take the whole Gran Torino movie, remake it into a Samurai film, and it would be exactly the same thing.
The difference between the western cowboy films and samurai films is not very great. Maybe people were surprised when Clint Eastwood did 2 Iwo Jima films from both the USA and the Japanese perspectives. They shouldn't be surprised. First, Iwo Jima is one of the last wild west adventures. The West was not truly won when the Americans took California. It was won 100 years later, only when the Americans took Japan. Japan is the final frontier. (Actually the final frontier is space, so Japan is the second last frontier.)
Consider that "Yojimbo" was the inspiration for "A Fistful of Dollars", a Clint Eastwood film. That "The Magnificent Seven" is really Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai", and that "Star Wars" is Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress".
Anyway, this time, there is a heavy weariness about "Gran Torino". If "The Unforgiven" is really about a cowboy growing old, "Gran Torino" is about the cowboy nearing the end of his life. It is really about continuity, and a dying way of life. Who are the new cowboys? The Gran Torino is the symbol of continuity.
This movie is really about the passing of the torch. I at first thought it was a nice charming tale of a crusty old man, and a hot chick reminding him that life is worth living again. But the movie is not about Sue, but rather about her brother, Thao. OK, maybe the actor playing Thao isn't very compelling, and he's shy and the spotlight doesn't shine on him.
I've heard Asian Americans complain that there are not that many movie roles tailored for them, and that it's some form of discrimination. Let's be fair. Actors are characters. Roles exist only because characters exist. You have to ask yourself: where are the characters? What are your icons? You had your Bruce Lees and Jackie Chans, they were the martial arts experts. So what's going on here? Asians are introverts, self-effacing people who do not draw attention to themselves. Unless you beat the shit out of people, fly through a bamboo forest, chut some funny pattern you spent 10 years in a cave trying to master, it's unlikely that you will get angmohs to notice you. You need to grow monkey hair, walk around with a pig head, or set up a bandit fortress in the mountains in order to get noticed.
So I think the problem of the Asian American actor is not that they are discriminated against. Its because they are up against loud and abrasive cowboys, or loud and abrasive gangstas. Asian cinema makes its mark on Hollywood, to be sure. How? Hollywood screen writers have shit for brains. OK, this is strictly untrue. But there are eras in history where there are plenty of great stories to be told, and eras where there are none. Ever noticed that people of your parent's generation had better stories to tell? My parents can always tell me of the first time they wrung a chicken's neck. They tell me stories where you have stories of 3 adult debt collectors versus my father at a ripe old age of 19 and his merry band of 4 younger siblings. Ever noticed that the 19th century is always a high watermark in the development of the Western novel?
Well I feel that in the 20th century, western countries have lives that are too good and too uneventful. There has always been a little more chaos in Asian countries. Cinema is new in Asian countries, so you always have the pioneers coming in with the great ideas. Hollywood is bereft of ideas because the moneybags and the accountants control everything. Therefore you have to rip off the Kurosawa samurai movies. Rip off the Ring, Dark Water and Ju-On. Then rip off "My Sassy Girl". Next up, horror of all horrors, it's time to rip off "Tampopo". But soon, the US will run out of plot ideas to rip off. It will be interesting to see what they can come up with next.
The other great export is Kung fu. The greatest kung fu film of recent times is actually "The Matrix", if you think about it.
Why are plots and kung fu so important? Because Asians just aren't very interesting people to look at. Asians are interesting from the inside but not the outside.
OK, end of diversion 1.
Diversion 2: why don't Americans have good plot ideas?
First, the idea of community in America is dead. Plot is all about how different members of a community interact with each other. In fact the very definition of a community is that a group of people who interact meaningfully with each other. So when community breaks down in the USA, there are no more plots. In "Gran Torino", there are actually 2 communities. Actually 1 community and 1 person who realises that his old community is dying or dead.
Second, America is a more individualistic society than most other great centres of film making. Individualism is conducive towards cinema because it's always easier to film individuals, it's always easier to centre a narrative around a main character and everybody else's place in the movie takes its reference to him. But in societies which are less individualistic, where people have a more complex relationship with society, there are more interesting stories. Thus, "Tampopo" is interesting because it has a whole ensemble of quirky characters. (How a convincing story of a white girl going around learning how to make ramen can be made is an entirely different matter.) "Shall We Dance" is very Japanese because there's the tension between a person living his life as a proper salaryman and his need for artistic expression. "My Sassy Girl" is interesting because of the tension between a crusty young chick's awakening love for a new boyfriend and her inability to let go of a previous old relationship.
Back to Gran Torino.
The movie is all about the ideas and values that a Hmong immigrant is going to imbibe. He can join a gang, and become a grunt for the rest of his life. Or he can try to assimilate and become an American, the Clint Eastwood sort of American. Instead of a car thief, he can become a construction worker. Instead of being a shy guy who loses the girl, he can learn how to become a man. Very conveniently, Thao doesn't have a father figure, and Clint Eastwood provides it for him.
The Hmongs are still a close knit community even though there aren't that many of them left in America. It seems that the only meaningful communities left in America are either immigrants or minorities. In a lot of Hollywood pictures, you don't see a lot of people who are friends or kin. At the most, they are allies. Like your Mission Impossible action films, all the good guys are colleagues, a team convened for the sole purpose of accomplishing the mission, and then broken up afterwards. Ties are not deep.
Clint Eastwood does not have a deep relationship with his family. Now we as Asians are probably going to be quite quick to condemn Westerners for being heartless to their aging parents. But you only have to spend some time with Clint Eastwood to realise that he's a very unpleasant guy when he's old. It's not that simple to say that his children are the bad guys. In general, parents who are great company and easy to get along with are rarely left on their own.
This movie has been accused of being racist. It is racist like "'allo 'allo", where all races are mocked. Whites are white trash. Latinos are gangstas. Hmongs are gooks. And aspiring gangstas. OK, the attitudes towards Hmongs are rather paternal, as though they were the innocent, pure Rousseau- esque noble savages who need to be educated, but once they are, have the potential to be real Americans.
But that's what happens when you forget that the relationship is quite unequal. Clint Eastwood may be Clint Eastwood, but he's also a helpless old man. He may be strong and wise but that's relative. First, he's a strong and wise asshole, and second, he's only strong and wise relative to a helpless old man. He sees his way of life disappearing, and he knows that he can't pass it along to his children. At the same time there are these fresh off the boat jungle people who are groping blindly in the dark. They represent the most realistic chance of his passing down his values, if you can overcome the racism.
The other thing about Clint Eastwood is this: the Asian Americans who accuse Gran Torino of being racist don't really appreciate this, but he made sure that the main white characters in the movie are Polish and Italian immigrants. Not the WASPs who have been in the US for generations, but they are themselves 2nd or 3rd generation Americans. Unless you appreciate that the Clint Eastwood character himself is an immigrant, a lot of the meaning in this picture will be lost.
So firstly he talks about what racism really means. The end of racism doesn't mean you stop calling people gook or nigger. But it means that you reach out to them and welcome them, even if you do it grudgingly.
Second, it raises the question of what it means to be an American. Is it the frontier spirit of Clint Eastwood and his merry band of Hmongs, or is it his children who drive Toyota land cruisers? That is a difficult question. Definitely Clint Eastwood is more like the Hmongs. But is he really a mainstream American, or is he always an outsider, passing his outsider values on to another bunch of outsiders? Why does he have more in common with the Hmongs? Because he’s a pioneer. He’s had the immigrant experience of forming a large community and trying to fit in. He’s had that choice of deciding between the straight and narrow, or a life of joining a gang.
But somehow I feel that, much as you want to draw parallels between the Poles, Italians and Jews of 100 years ago, to Asian Americans today, I don't think that the parallels are perfect. Yes, Thao has the legacy of that Gran Torino. But what is that gook going to do with your Gran Torino? Poles / Italians are still European. When you go further away from Europe, the whole mindset changes. If Asian Americans were to forge a real identity in the country, what would it be? Yes, this is a continuation of the frontier spirit. But it would be morphed into something quite unrecognisable.
So the good deal - all the tickets were going at $6. There aren't that many good shows these days. I've been watching quite a few Clint Eastwood pictures lately. Somehow there are a few directors out there who work until past 80. Like Akira Kurosawa directing "Ran". Or Antonioni (but maybe they started late.) So Clint Eastwood is enjoying a late career renaissance, that's good. I suppose he has always been making solid films that have somehow escaped the attention of the critics who automatically equated being macho with shallowness during the 70s and 80s. In 1992, he made a picture "The Unforgiven", and it got a very good critical reception. In the last few years, he has a solid record: "Mystic River", "Million Dollar Baby", "Changeling", "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Flag of our Fathers".
I feel that his late flowering reflects his self knowledge that he's almost alone in his own genre of making macho but thoughtful films. Manhood isn't really what it used to be, for better or worse. These days, action heroes are more the geeks who are equally good at embracing technology, typified by Ethan Hunt. Brilliant, resourceful, but a user of brainwork as much as muscle work. Even Daniel Craig as James Bond looks like he gets his muscles from the gym rather than from manual labour. Then you have a whole plethora of cartoon characters which take the seriousness out of beating the shit out of another guy.
I feel that old school macho attitudes are more a matter of strength of character. Yes, we can admire the modern action heroes because they are excellent problem solvers, engineers, witty, nimble, graceful. But Clint Eastwood harks back to a more old school form of grit. His characters do not lounge around at stylish bars and sip fancy cocktails. They don't run around with the latest laptops and technology. They don't promote a millennial, consumerist lifestyle, or wear the latest fashion. This is not to denigrate the new generation, because the new generation have a different, equally challenging set of demands placed upon them, but people like Clint Eastwood don't really exist any more.
The Clint Eastwood cities are not the ultra modern, stylish and futuristic cities that you see in James Bond / Vin Diesel movies. You don't have MI 3 in Shanghai or Rome, Casino Royale in Venice and some funky Monte Carlo swanky place. It's not some old communist capital which has been taken over by swanky sleek capitalism designer stuff.
His proper place is the decaying urban metropolitan. His vision of America is still stuck in the 70s and the 80s, where America is questioning and lamenting its declining place in the world, when it was paling next to newly confident places like Germany, Japan and the Asian Tigers. Its the urban ghetto, which has always existed, and gang wars co-exist with entire communities and families bringing up children.
If Gran Torino is a moral tale, it involves the struggle for the soul of a community. Maybe a fight between good and evil, even though it is more true to say that all sides have different degrees of shadiness.
Spoilers from now on.
I was fucking stupid. I bought tickets, and thinking I had 2 hours to burn, walked over to a bar and had a beer. Then I took too long for dinner. By the time I realised it was too late, I missed 10 minutes of the film. I had to rely on movie reviews and youtube to keep me updated on what I had missed. Luckily this film is not "Crimson Gold" where all the excitement takes place in the first 10 minutes.
This has enough action to satisfy Eastwood aficionados. But Eastwood movies are also about character. They are a lot like classic samurai films, where the character knows that there is a duel tomorrow, there's going to be a fight and then they're doing a lot of thinking, weighing up all their moral choices. You could take the whole Gran Torino movie, remake it into a Samurai film, and it would be exactly the same thing.
The difference between the western cowboy films and samurai films is not very great. Maybe people were surprised when Clint Eastwood did 2 Iwo Jima films from both the USA and the Japanese perspectives. They shouldn't be surprised. First, Iwo Jima is one of the last wild west adventures. The West was not truly won when the Americans took California. It was won 100 years later, only when the Americans took Japan. Japan is the final frontier. (Actually the final frontier is space, so Japan is the second last frontier.)
Consider that "Yojimbo" was the inspiration for "A Fistful of Dollars", a Clint Eastwood film. That "The Magnificent Seven" is really Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai", and that "Star Wars" is Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress".
Anyway, this time, there is a heavy weariness about "Gran Torino". If "The Unforgiven" is really about a cowboy growing old, "Gran Torino" is about the cowboy nearing the end of his life. It is really about continuity, and a dying way of life. Who are the new cowboys? The Gran Torino is the symbol of continuity.
This movie is really about the passing of the torch. I at first thought it was a nice charming tale of a crusty old man, and a hot chick reminding him that life is worth living again. But the movie is not about Sue, but rather about her brother, Thao. OK, maybe the actor playing Thao isn't very compelling, and he's shy and the spotlight doesn't shine on him.
I've heard Asian Americans complain that there are not that many movie roles tailored for them, and that it's some form of discrimination. Let's be fair. Actors are characters. Roles exist only because characters exist. You have to ask yourself: where are the characters? What are your icons? You had your Bruce Lees and Jackie Chans, they were the martial arts experts. So what's going on here? Asians are introverts, self-effacing people who do not draw attention to themselves. Unless you beat the shit out of people, fly through a bamboo forest, chut some funny pattern you spent 10 years in a cave trying to master, it's unlikely that you will get angmohs to notice you. You need to grow monkey hair, walk around with a pig head, or set up a bandit fortress in the mountains in order to get noticed.
So I think the problem of the Asian American actor is not that they are discriminated against. Its because they are up against loud and abrasive cowboys, or loud and abrasive gangstas. Asian cinema makes its mark on Hollywood, to be sure. How? Hollywood screen writers have shit for brains. OK, this is strictly untrue. But there are eras in history where there are plenty of great stories to be told, and eras where there are none. Ever noticed that people of your parent's generation had better stories to tell? My parents can always tell me of the first time they wrung a chicken's neck. They tell me stories where you have stories of 3 adult debt collectors versus my father at a ripe old age of 19 and his merry band of 4 younger siblings. Ever noticed that the 19th century is always a high watermark in the development of the Western novel?
Well I feel that in the 20th century, western countries have lives that are too good and too uneventful. There has always been a little more chaos in Asian countries. Cinema is new in Asian countries, so you always have the pioneers coming in with the great ideas. Hollywood is bereft of ideas because the moneybags and the accountants control everything. Therefore you have to rip off the Kurosawa samurai movies. Rip off the Ring, Dark Water and Ju-On. Then rip off "My Sassy Girl". Next up, horror of all horrors, it's time to rip off "Tampopo". But soon, the US will run out of plot ideas to rip off. It will be interesting to see what they can come up with next.
The other great export is Kung fu. The greatest kung fu film of recent times is actually "The Matrix", if you think about it.
Why are plots and kung fu so important? Because Asians just aren't very interesting people to look at. Asians are interesting from the inside but not the outside.
OK, end of diversion 1.
Diversion 2: why don't Americans have good plot ideas?
First, the idea of community in America is dead. Plot is all about how different members of a community interact with each other. In fact the very definition of a community is that a group of people who interact meaningfully with each other. So when community breaks down in the USA, there are no more plots. In "Gran Torino", there are actually 2 communities. Actually 1 community and 1 person who realises that his old community is dying or dead.
Second, America is a more individualistic society than most other great centres of film making. Individualism is conducive towards cinema because it's always easier to film individuals, it's always easier to centre a narrative around a main character and everybody else's place in the movie takes its reference to him. But in societies which are less individualistic, where people have a more complex relationship with society, there are more interesting stories. Thus, "Tampopo" is interesting because it has a whole ensemble of quirky characters. (How a convincing story of a white girl going around learning how to make ramen can be made is an entirely different matter.) "Shall We Dance" is very Japanese because there's the tension between a person living his life as a proper salaryman and his need for artistic expression. "My Sassy Girl" is interesting because of the tension between a crusty young chick's awakening love for a new boyfriend and her inability to let go of a previous old relationship.
Back to Gran Torino.
The movie is all about the ideas and values that a Hmong immigrant is going to imbibe. He can join a gang, and become a grunt for the rest of his life. Or he can try to assimilate and become an American, the Clint Eastwood sort of American. Instead of a car thief, he can become a construction worker. Instead of being a shy guy who loses the girl, he can learn how to become a man. Very conveniently, Thao doesn't have a father figure, and Clint Eastwood provides it for him.
The Hmongs are still a close knit community even though there aren't that many of them left in America. It seems that the only meaningful communities left in America are either immigrants or minorities. In a lot of Hollywood pictures, you don't see a lot of people who are friends or kin. At the most, they are allies. Like your Mission Impossible action films, all the good guys are colleagues, a team convened for the sole purpose of accomplishing the mission, and then broken up afterwards. Ties are not deep.
Clint Eastwood does not have a deep relationship with his family. Now we as Asians are probably going to be quite quick to condemn Westerners for being heartless to their aging parents. But you only have to spend some time with Clint Eastwood to realise that he's a very unpleasant guy when he's old. It's not that simple to say that his children are the bad guys. In general, parents who are great company and easy to get along with are rarely left on their own.
This movie has been accused of being racist. It is racist like "'allo 'allo", where all races are mocked. Whites are white trash. Latinos are gangstas. Hmongs are gooks. And aspiring gangstas. OK, the attitudes towards Hmongs are rather paternal, as though they were the innocent, pure Rousseau- esque noble savages who need to be educated, but once they are, have the potential to be real Americans.
But that's what happens when you forget that the relationship is quite unequal. Clint Eastwood may be Clint Eastwood, but he's also a helpless old man. He may be strong and wise but that's relative. First, he's a strong and wise asshole, and second, he's only strong and wise relative to a helpless old man. He sees his way of life disappearing, and he knows that he can't pass it along to his children. At the same time there are these fresh off the boat jungle people who are groping blindly in the dark. They represent the most realistic chance of his passing down his values, if you can overcome the racism.
The other thing about Clint Eastwood is this: the Asian Americans who accuse Gran Torino of being racist don't really appreciate this, but he made sure that the main white characters in the movie are Polish and Italian immigrants. Not the WASPs who have been in the US for generations, but they are themselves 2nd or 3rd generation Americans. Unless you appreciate that the Clint Eastwood character himself is an immigrant, a lot of the meaning in this picture will be lost.
So firstly he talks about what racism really means. The end of racism doesn't mean you stop calling people gook or nigger. But it means that you reach out to them and welcome them, even if you do it grudgingly.
Second, it raises the question of what it means to be an American. Is it the frontier spirit of Clint Eastwood and his merry band of Hmongs, or is it his children who drive Toyota land cruisers? That is a difficult question. Definitely Clint Eastwood is more like the Hmongs. But is he really a mainstream American, or is he always an outsider, passing his outsider values on to another bunch of outsiders? Why does he have more in common with the Hmongs? Because he’s a pioneer. He’s had the immigrant experience of forming a large community and trying to fit in. He’s had that choice of deciding between the straight and narrow, or a life of joining a gang.
But somehow I feel that, much as you want to draw parallels between the Poles, Italians and Jews of 100 years ago, to Asian Americans today, I don't think that the parallels are perfect. Yes, Thao has the legacy of that Gran Torino. But what is that gook going to do with your Gran Torino? Poles / Italians are still European. When you go further away from Europe, the whole mindset changes. If Asian Americans were to forge a real identity in the country, what would it be? Yes, this is a continuation of the frontier spirit. But it would be morphed into something quite unrecognisable.
That's the part of the movie that makes me a little uneasy. The parallel is a little bit too slick. It's like you're inseminating a Hmong receptacle with your American virtues and hope that he will survive. Sure it's a good deed, but Hmongs are not merely passive receptacles, even though the movie has a Hmong culture 101 segment in it.
I looked at the wiki entry for the movie. Remember the chicken shit angmoh boyfriend who was dating Sue when they were laid upon by 2 black thugs? The actor playing that chicken shit angmoh is Clint Eastwood’s son. Looks like being a tough guy is not hereditary.
In the end, I think that Clint Eastwood got a fair deal for himself. He died, but that death is no big sacrifice. It was going to be a matter of time anyway. What really matters is he educated and taught a youngster, no matter how superficially. Thao will never be like Clint Eastwood, but at least he will try. He traded in his life, and he defeated the Hmong gangs, and he made sure that something of himself survives. It's not a bad deal.
Naturally when I thought about this movie, I thought about my sister who I'm not sure is Singaporean or Asian American. If this is a torch that is to be passed on to her. And I was practically an Asian American for 4 years of my life so I do have something to think about.
I looked at the wiki entry for the movie. Remember the chicken shit angmoh boyfriend who was dating Sue when they were laid upon by 2 black thugs? The actor playing that chicken shit angmoh is Clint Eastwood’s son. Looks like being a tough guy is not hereditary.
In the end, I think that Clint Eastwood got a fair deal for himself. He died, but that death is no big sacrifice. It was going to be a matter of time anyway. What really matters is he educated and taught a youngster, no matter how superficially. Thao will never be like Clint Eastwood, but at least he will try. He traded in his life, and he defeated the Hmong gangs, and he made sure that something of himself survives. It's not a bad deal.
Naturally when I thought about this movie, I thought about my sister who I'm not sure is Singaporean or Asian American. If this is a torch that is to be passed on to her. And I was practically an Asian American for 4 years of my life so I do have something to think about.
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