Cuckoo

I want to start off that I’m typing this at 3 am in a McDonald’s with a big screen TV, who plays Electrico’s “What Do You See” which is a pretty OK U2 / Coldplay thing, although you know when you are writing a national song, other than being anthemic, it’s got to be more melodic, and it’s got to make more sense when you sing it without the accompaniment. And it goes without saying that it doesn’t sound very nice when you hear it every 20 minutes. Sometimes I think they put that song there so as to chase away people just buy 1 coke but hang out here for a few hours at a stretch.

Was seeing someone coming and ordering some food, and I thought, wow, she’s beautiful, until I took a second look, and realized – whoops, it should really be he’s beautiful. Ah well, I guess that’s common. Asspecially after midnight on Saturday.

There is a person that I will now call cuckoo, not because he is stupid, (even though in a way he is a little daft). A cuckoo is a bird who lays his eggs in somebody else’s nest, and I think in a way that was who he was.

He was – let’s say he was from the B class, but he hung out a lot with people like us in the A class. I know, that is very elitist. I don’t really know why there is a class system in Singapore secondary education, but there is, we just accepted it as it is. Ironically, years later, when I went to the US, I got introduced to the idea of affirmative action. The universities there are more willing to accept people from more disadvantaged backgrounds, not because they think that this way life is more fair, but because having a greater diversity of people in your university community makes the educational experience a richer one for all people involved. If you put all the high scorers in the same class, everybody would just be a nerd from the same kind of background.

Anyway, at that time, I just thought that he was a social climber. But eventually, a few years ago I glimpsed another truth: that he was also more like us than the people in the B class, who he also got along with nevertheless. Like many of us, he was stubborn and opiniated.

All the same I felt that he was always a little insecure, and I guess – who wouldn’t? I felt that he aspired to a level of intelligence that was a little beyond him. It still didn’t change the fact that he was smarter than most people, of course.

He’s a teacher now. He’s teaching at a girl’s school, even though he’s incredibly lecherous. He’s not only lecherous, he’s really too candid about it. He was showing around pictures of some of his class dressed in SIA sarong kebayas and a mutual friend said, "you know, I don't really think you should be in the teaching profession." Of course, we all recognise that there is still a yawning gap between being extremely horny and actually acting out on it, and we know that while he is standing dangerously close to the line, he hasn't actually crossed it.

He’s not like me, I like to make a lot of off-colour jokes, not because I’m especially lecherous. I have a good imagination, but I like to see people squirm. Or laugh. Or both. Shingot is lecherous, but he shuts his mouth up about it, and he seems to accomplish this seeming contradictory intellectual position of being very faithful to his wife, while retaining the freedom to leer at any woman he chooses. That’s in a way quite sensible if – and only if he succeeds in pulling it off. Otherwise you can imagine how fucked up things can get.

Cuckoo’s been single for a long time. I feel that there is something quite childish in the way that he talks about women solely according to their physical attractiveness, and not very much else.

He’s a Cancer, and something about him behaves like a Cancer person. He’s a little clingy to his friends. You will find him a little not very respectful of personal boundaries. And if you’re the subject of his pet peeves, he could be very persistent in finding some reason to get annoyed at you.

He’s quite friendly at first, which is good. But soon enough his faults will surface. And there is this innocence about him which is dangerously close to naiveté.

Recently, he confided a secret to me. He had been hanging out with a few friends of mine, who were Christian. I even thought for a while that he was in the same church as them. Until he recently indicated to me, after finding out that I am a Buddhist, that he’s just “infiltrating” them and trying to find out what being a Christian is really like.

He didn’t want to be a Christian, and I suppose in a way I agree with him. I will never be a Christian because there are too many Christian ideas I really don’t agree with. And because I cherish my freedom of thought too much.

After swearing me to secrecy (at least not telling those people) he went on a tirade against mega-churches, and how they systematically brainwashed you, while all the same they provided you with a community that made you feel like you belonged. He didn’t like the tithing. Your membership fee for a church is a fixed percentage of your income – this goes some way in explaining how a lot of churches to some extent set aside the traditional aversion towards material gain (remember it was written “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven”) and just tell their guys to go forth and multiply their income.

He didn’t like how Christian doctrine tells you that Christians are better than non-Christians, that men are just that much better than animals. That is the dirty little secret of Christianity – I was quite shocked to read in an article, that in a poll of pastors, 50% of them are unwilling to hold inter-faith dialogues, lest people might think that Christianity is not the superior religion. Yes, in Singapore.

And he also didn’t like how a lot of Sunday school teachers would tell the congregation that the Bible is right and your science textbooks are wrong, which basically reverses the work of other school teachers like him. I think a lot of these things are all about protecting the Christian faith attacks. First, you bend the truth as far as you can, maybe even break it, so that people stop doubting the Bible. Then in the end maybe you even bend what’s written in the Bible.

I suppose I shared a lot of his misgivings about the Christian faith. What happens in Islam I can only guess, because it is even harder for me to find out what goes on in a mosque sermon.

But I understand a lot of problems that take place in a religion. How do you preserve a faith when everything is based on a book, and ever since that book was written, people keep on finding out stuff that keeps on contradicting what’s in there? How do you preserve the character of a community, and keep them believing? How do modern living, and the moral values of the religion that you want to impart, coexist with each other? How do you make all these thorny philosophical problems accessible in some form to people who may or may not be intellectually sophisticated to grasp all the issues? How do you tell them that although what’s written in the Bible is false, all these stories allude to a spiritual truth?

I know where he’s coming from. But a lot of these things don’t really have to do with religion. There are a lot of faculties in universities which teach pretty useless stuff, but they are very resistant to change. There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t applied and probably shouldn’t be applied, but you just insist on it just because it’s there. Then it’s a human issue, the principal-agent problem.

The government has so far adhered to the Religious Harmony act, because it recognizes the importance of preserving social harmony. But recently it has found that the Church of Our Saviour has stepped over the mark, as some people have pointed out about the AWARE incident. I think they can go too far, and I don’t think they should be protected if they go too far. If you read some of the things that they’ve been saying about “secular thought”, you would be completely shocked. The way they’re talking, they would rather prefer the enlightenment didn’t happen, that we’re all still living in the stone ages.

All the same, I recognize that organized religion provides certain things that cannot otherwise be provided. Atheists always talk about a new religion called “humanism”. How the hell do you know that humanism is going to work and not have the problems that Christianity is having? In spite of everything, it is all tried and proven. All the fuck-ups (think about the bloody holy wars and the Reformation) have already happened. How do you know that your new religion will not result in a lot of stirred shit?

And this Cuckoo, what is he “infiltrating” the church for? Does he not recognize that it is a community of people who have shared values? Does he not realize that society is going to be in big trouble if you took away all these little communities? This is part and parcel of living in the real world, rather than living in a world of ideas. I have this theory that many church goers are closet atheists, that they all don’t believe in the literal existence of God, but rather they just say what they say because they need the spiritual guidance and the friendships in the church. God is false but all the other stuff is real. Does he want to “infiltrate” the church because he can have a few more friends?

In fact I am going to commit some intellectual blasphemy here. I think you should not reject religion because it is false. You have to see the whole picture, the whole system, and then make a wholesale evaluation.

I'm thinking, religion is really not that important to me to intellectualise about. Its all about practice, what you actually do with your life, it's about whether or not it makes you a better person, makes you want to do things the right way, rather than the content of your belief. Knowing things on an intellectual level, I've come to realise - it doesn't mean anything at all.

Well, at least he knows how to be friendly and polite to people, which is much more than I can say for myself.

Football (non) betting season 2 week 3

A decent week for betting last week. But I didn't bet anything so I didn't win anything.

The last few paper bets were OK. I lost by betting against Burnley again, but I made back from the other games. Tottenham had a lucky game where they got a goal against West Ham courtesy of a very lousy back pass from a West Ham striker. That was good. On paper I made $4 last week.

Here are my bets for the coming week:
Tottenham beats Birmingham at 1.28
Man City beats Portsmouth at 1.48
Liverpool beats Bolton at 1.43
Barcelona beats Sporting Gijon at 1.12

Putting "$20" on each.

Below the Belt

Just noticed that in the recent issue of 8 Days Felicia Chin made a public statement that she "has not had plastic surgery on the upper half of her body". What the f does that mean? First it is useful to conclude that you could rub 10 gallons of bust firming cream into your tits until they become harder than steel, and it still wouldn't count as plastic surgery. And secondly what sort of plastic surgery is going on below the belt? I'm thinking of PTP, which incidently stands for "Pussy Tightening Procedure".

Football (non) betting season 2 week 2

It's been a very painful week for me. I had terrible luck.

Man U vs Birmingham, at least I won that.

I bet on Liverpool to beat Tottenham, and I lost that.

I bet on Wigan to beat Wolves, and I lost that.

I bet on Man U to beat Burnley, and I also lost that.

For Liverpool vs Tottenham, I thought that Tottenham were a weaker team, with half of their defence out injured. I was wrong. Liverpool choked against Tottenham, who is showing themselves up to be some kind of a season.

Wigan managed to beat Aston Villa, so I thought that it would be easy against Wolves. But to my surprise, Wolves beat Wigan in what was one of the big upsets of the season.

But that upset was overshadowed by another one: Burnley beat Man U. It would have been an upset even if it were merely a draw. As it is, this was a truly crazy result.

I had betrayed one of my central tenets: bet on form, not reputation. The corollary to that is, if you do not know what the form is, don't bet. Which means: don't bet so early in the season. I think for the next few weeks, I will not do any football betting.

I'll just do paper betting to see what I would have won if I had bet on those things.

I'll bet on Arsenal to beat Portsmouth at 1.07 (miserable, I know but still...)
Manchester City to beat Wolves at 1.22
Everton to beat Burnley at 1.93
Tottenham to beat West Ham at 1.95.

See how that goes.

National Day

What is the meaning of National Day?

Why did we call the anniversary of Singapore’s independence “National Day” and not “Independence Day”? Let’s think about the circumstances of Singapore’s independence. Relatively ignominious. We didn’t achieve independence. We had it thrust upon us. We couldn’t get along with the Malaysians, and they wanted us out. We were born of a divorce. We could have called it Succession day, or Divorce Day, it would have been more accurate. In the end, I suppose we just wanted to remember that it was a day to commemorate Singapore, rather than one event – the birth of Singapore as an independent entity.

After all, it doesn’t really matter what happened on Aug 9th 1965, that affects how we think about National day. Suppose Mr X had a divorce. Was it a good thing, or a bad thing? And we will always look towards what happened both before and after that date in order to help us figure it out. There was no heroic revolutionary war (but the Japanese Occupation partially served that function.) There was no great struggle against injustice. You could say that LKY’s fighting against the Malaysian bumiputra policy being implemented in Singapore was partially a struggle against injustice, but it was hardly the same heroic stuff like, say, the fight against apartheid.

You could look at Zimbabwe as a comparison. It was a struggle against a supposedly racist Rhodesian government. Mugabe was acclaimed as a worldwide hero for a while. He made a lot of grand speeches about national reconciliation shortly after independence. But after that it was mostly downhill. Mugabe turned out to be worse for Zimbabwe than anything the white government could ever come up with. Thus a heroic independence was subsequently tarnished by subsequent events.

If Singapore has a great amount of confidence in itself, it is largely because of the nation building that has taken place after independence. A high standard of living for many (if not all), the avoidance of racial conflict and a safe and secure environment, these are not easily sniffed at.

What Singapore has achieved, I would argue, is a death knell for the national myth. You used to think that a successful country not only has to enable their citizens to live a good and full life, nationhood should evoke some romantic and glorious feelings.

Singapore has actually shown that nothing is further from the truth.

In a way, I would say that Singapore is not really a nation, and it will never be a nation. A more accurate description of Singapore is that it is a principality, much like those little states that used to pepper Europe. We are like Andorra, or Luxembourg, or Athens or Venice.

It is not for me to discuss what nationhood here, and what it means, because it is such a big and complex topic, and also because, having read Benedict Anderson’s “Imagined Communities”, I find that others before me have done it so much better. But Anderson points out that nationhood is a juxtaposition of 2 very different visions. First, a nation is an entire landscape, a sort of an entire universe unto itself. He points out that nationhood came about around the same time when the literary genre of the novel came about. The idea of the nation is echoed in the scope of a novel, which attempts to describe to the reader an entire landscape of sights and sounds. Just as the novel encapsulates events that take place in a large community of people, this is also the idea behind categorizing an entire region as a nation. The second idea is the seeming opposite: that the nation is not universal, that it describes your tribe, and not somebody else’s tribe.

This (partial) definition of a nation as a landscape is something that makes a lot of sense, because there aren’t a lot of other definitions that make sense. It is difficult to categorise Singapore in terms of language (although Singlish is almost our unique national language, Malaysia notwithstanding). Race? Forget it. But if you’re not Chinese, Indian or Malay there might be a bit of difficulty getting used to you as a “real” Singaporean. The thing that makes you Singaporean is that you have lived in Singapore for a long time, hung out with Singaporeans, have Singaporean friends. The true meaning of Singapore is the Singaporean environment.

Singapore, I feel, is far too small to be an all-encompassing landscape. It is a city. I feel that a lot of the resentment felt at Singapore is really about the smallness of this place. Walking around with a Singaporean nationality is like being a short person, one would feel. While it is not a handicap or a deformity, you do feel a little squashed all the time. Yes, people get unhappy at the government, or the dysfunctional Singaporean behaviour, but for me a lot of it is the smallness. Of course, the caveat to this is that there are many forms of smallness, and physical size is just one of them. In terms of per capita GDP Singapore is a giant in our region, and sometimes when we go to neighbouring countries we act like kings. But these are just some of the many contradictions in Singapore.

Singapore also suffers from another form of smallness which is quite intangible. Singapore is spiritually small. We don’t feel, like Americans, that we are some kind of chosen people. We don’t feel like we have something fresh and new to offer to the world. Singapore is not the spiritual ancestral homeland of our race, and anyway Singapore does not have its own race, unless you’re Malay.

Singapore, however, is the land of opportunity. It was founded as a land of opportunity, that’s the way that Raffles saw it, and it still is one. In a way, Singapore reflects the characteristics of our Great Leader Lee Kuan Yew, who was a giant in all aspects except for his emotional quotient.

But do you really need a great founding myth to find meaning in your own life? I mean your life is yours to live and therefore also yours to make some meaning out of. You can always go your own way, forge your own identity, mythologise your own life, since you can’t always mythologise your own forefathers.

What we need to understand about nationhood is that it is something that came out of the Western tradition, particularly the enlightenment. Nationhood is an abstract idea, and a lot rests on the peoples’ willingness to believe in abstract ideas such as these. Westerners have always been more accommodating towards abstract ideas than, say the Chinese. For them, even in the Dark ages, the whole society was dominated by the Church. Can you imagine there ever being a Chinese theocracy? There is a lot of earthiness in Chinese culture in contrast, and there is a definite limit to how much we can believe in abstract ideas. An American might cry out, “give me liberty or give me death”. The Chinese would die, but for something more tangible, like the Chinese people, or the Chinese nation. You might go to church and pray for the well being of the spirits of the departed. If you’re Chinese, you do something more concrete, and

In a way, Singapore illustrates this pragmatism. We didn’t invent the golden straitjacket (a term coined by Thomas Friedman) but our nation played its part in making this acceptable to people. We might just have discerned some truths that a lot of political scientists were heretofore reluctant to acknowledge: that people generally value material wealth more than abstract notions of freedom, like free speech, right of assembly, right of dissent.

There are things that Singapore have granted to its citizens, which can be thought of as forms of freedom, although not commonly accepted in Western political thought. If we make the streets safe for people to walk around at night, that is a form of freedom. If we impose restrictions on discrimination on the basis of race, that is also a form of freedom, albeit for a minority of people.

Our national pledge rests on a highly negative definition of what Singapore is about. We say that we are citizens “regardless of race, language or religion.” Singapore is not about race, language or religion. In fact, the very idea that there would be a national myth is partially discredited when you add in “creed”. This almost precludes the possibility that there would be such a thing as a national ideology! Incredible – it’s almost as though you are saying, that there are so few things upon which you could build your national identity upon.

Elsewhere, though, we have borrowed heavily from the intellectual tradition of the. “So as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation”, that sounds a lot like the “pursuit of life, liberty and happiness”, without the liberty, unfortunately. But they are fairly concrete objectives. No hairy ideas like “freedom”. Are you happy? Are you rich? Do you feel like your life is going forward? These are easier questions to answer than “what is freedom”.

The pledge distinguishes between means and ends. It says, “To build a democratic society based on justice and equality”. But do we want all these things of themselves? We only tolerate the philosophical stuff because these things help us achieve what we really want, which is “happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation”.

So, what is Singapore? I see something very pragmatic about our existence. And what we have done, is we have used that pragmatism well, we have achieve some degree of prominence, at least as much as what our small size can allow, and we have showed the world what this pragmatism can achieve. We have made a contribution to the political debate: just how important or not are ideals? We have achieved a lot, compared to what some more idealistic and well meaning nations have accomplished. We have not won the argument, but we have made a point. The triumph of Singapore is the triumph of pragmatism.

Up

There is such a dearth of good movies coming to Singapore for the last few years that I can just go to the cinema and watch any movie that’s worth watching. I think that Singapore movie audiences largely deserve to watch the dreck served up by distributors because that’s basically what they want, the same old safe dross that’s been proven to put butts on seats, the blockbuster that was invented in the 1970s.

Recently, there have been a few good movies, but I suppose this is summer season. So it was a surprise that here is a stretch of 4 movies that I want to watch: “Harry Potter”, “Hangover”, “Up” and “Bruno”.

This morning I had taken leave to drive my grandmother’s private ambulance. However since her appointment was rescheduled (and my father taking over tomorrow) I decided to go back to work. But on my way to work, I bumped into a colleague on the bus, and after taking the bus for a little while, suddenly decided that I was going to take leave anyway. Most of the time I’m on leave, it’s a drag to get myself out of the house, and since I’m already in the city, why not use it, right? So after having a long a leisurely breakfast, I was in the cinema, watching “Up” and wearing a pair of 3D glasses.

By some coincidence, Nat had his folks in town this morning, and he had also taken leave in the morning, and had watched “Up” at approximately the same time I was watching it, but in a different mall. Then again, is it really possible to distinguish any 2 given Capitaland malls from each other? Thought not.

What more can I say about the first 5 minutes of the film, except that just about every movie review of “Up” I’ve read (around 10) have said that it was great, high point of the film, blah blah blah. It is the emotional core of the film. You know why Carl Fredrikson wants to make this trip, and it’s very clear.

This film is a lot like “Gran Torino” in a sense. Old white men and young Asian kid. Old white man is a widower, and consequently embittered, in spite of, by most accounts, having lived a long and good life, and had the sort of wonderful, perfect 30/40 year marriage that people just don’t seem to have anymore. There is something tragic in that, no doubt, that you can live the sort of life that many people only dream about having, and at the end of the day, you are still a miserable old sod.

Some people have wondered, why are Asians always the kids in these movies. I don’t know, my guess is that it’s some kind of homage to Miyazaki because his main characters are usually kids. I suppose Westerners don’t really know us Asians very well, not as well as they do Jews or Blacks. The image of Asia is that of a kid, because we know that our time has come, and only come lately. A blank sheet, then, because they don’t know better. Asians because us Asians know how to be kids. The westerners are just too smart alecky, especially in movies, and clever rather than wise. The story was calling for a kid to be a kid. A scout who helps old men cross the road.

Some people have criticized the movie for not having a lot of ideas. I’d admit that if I were the screenwriter the first part of the movie would be much easier than the rest of the movie to write. What can you do with a floating house / caravan anyway? The thing about animated films is that you usually put quite some effort into inventing the funny characters. Then after that, instead of looking for a proper plot, maybe it’s easier to just make it a road movie.

The road movie has been around in literature forever. Three of the most famous works in their respective cultures are road movies: “The Odyssey” (woohoo!), “Wizard of Oz” and “Journey to the West”. As with “Journey to the West”, the basic plot is familiar: put together a bunch of people who are driving each other up the wall: a tricky monkey and an anal retentive monk. Watch the sparks fly.

Quite a few Pixar films are road movies. Finding Nemo, Cars and the Incredibles are road movies. Shrek, the one truly impressive Dreamworks feature, is also a road movie. Hangover, which I watched last week, is a sorda road movie, even though it is also a treasure hunt.

Pixar movies are usually notable for having a lot of nice clever touches, like the dogs with their talking collars. I like how the alpha dog has a squeaky voice. Pixar are largely made up of engineers, and more than a few of them are quite contemptuous of authority: this shows up in their pictures. I liked the scenes that make fun of Carl Fredrikson being an old fart. It was quite funny to see the two old men attempt to fight each other, and throw out their backs in the process.

Some people have commended Pixar for being brave with their plots. Surprisingly, some people feel that having people of different generations together is brave. To me, it is not. The Incredibles is about a family. Finding Nemo is about a father and son. It is unusual, though, to have an old man sitting on a porch. But not that unusual, because Gran Torino did it, probably independently of “Up” – “Gran Torino” was started after “Up” and released before “Up” – Pixar films have very long pipelines. Relationships between people of different generations are a little unusual in animated features, but in Asian cinema – no. Lee Ang’s first 3 films are about dealing with that difficult father. Ozu made many films about dealing with old parents. Old people are constantly in your lives. I suppose this is another reason why the Boy Scout is Asian – it’s a little difficult to believe westerners behaving so respectfully towards their elders. We know that John Hughes died last week, and he specialized in making films about generation gaps.

But “Up” is not really about relationships between generations. It’s about 2 views of the world clashing. The boy scout is really a boy, not a teenager learning how to be an adult. He basically has 3 roles in the show: to make sure that Carl Fredrickson is not alone and to assist him, and to persuade him to rescue the funny bird.

The plot is not so water tight. Carl Fredrickson is not really an old man physically, because he’s surprisingly fit. He is old spiritually. But that can change. The funny thing is this: the journey started out being some kind of a spiritual journey, a dedication to his wife. How did it end up being a conventional good vs evil action movie towards the end? The wife was the emotional centre of those very excellent 5 minutes. Why did she disappear for the rest of the movie? Yes, there is pathos is finding that the hero that you worshipped in your youth turned out to be some kind of a villain. But beyond that, the connection to the life he shared with the wife is lost.

I suppose it is the prerogative of road movie to have a loose plot, that is the whole point, that you tie up disparate threads together with nothing much binding them other than the fact that they all belong to the same journey.

One question that’s constantly being asked is: when is Pixar going to screw up? There have been 10 feature films so far, and they’ve all ranged from the excellent to the merely good. But some day, they will falter. And when? In the early 90s, it seemed as though Disney were on a great roll. They had the “Mermaid”, then “Beauty and the Beast”, “Aladdin” and the “Lion King”. Then came “Mulan”, which was brave for attempting a Chinese story. Then came “Hercules” and “Tarzan” which was downhill for them.

Thing about Pixar is that you can find out what’s in the pipeline, and it looks a little worrying. Next 2 years will see 2 sequels – Toy Story 3 and Cars 2. Then a typical Pixar film where you have 2 Newts who have to mate because they are the last surviving of the species – and they can’t stand each other. And after that, Pixar are going to change direction and go into fairy tales because they’re now part of Disney. I hope they negotiate this change in direction well.

Thus far, many Pixar films have had very interesting setups. A bunch of toys coming to life and having plenty of wacky adventures. Scary monsters working for a large corporation. A middle life superhero making a comeback. A fish looking for his son. A rat making a career as a cook. There is a lesson in storytelling here. Whereas characters can be as weird and wonderful as they come, the stories and situations that people recognise arise because from everyday, mundane experiences. The Pixar formula, if there is one, is to put all these weirdos through stuff that many ordinary human beings have to go through, and see what happens. But you can run out of ideas.

I was reading some film criticism as commenting that Spielberg and Star Wars were massively influential movies that forever changed movies for the worse. Movies used to be about adults going through life experiences, and suddenly they were all about childlike. This change in artistic direction coincided with the invention and popularization of arcade games. Suddenly what used to be a movie is now a collection of set pieces.

I credit Pixar with injecting a dose of adulthood into movies of this genre, even though all its pictures inevitably fall into this category. In a way there is no choice: if you’re going to make movies with such a large expense, you have to make it commercial.

Hangover

Watched “Hangover”. I suppose I remember why it got rated so highly. Some people will see some kind of a stoopid comedy, they will pigeonhole it into some kind of a stoopid comedy genre. In a way that description is accurate, but it misses out on 2 things that for me makes this movie worth watching.

First, is the plot, which goes like this. 4 people throw a stag party at Las Vegas. They wake up the next morning, one of them is missing, and they start to recreate the events that took place the night before. There is not much to say about any individual aspect of the plot. All the stuff is completely preposterous, but it is kinda clever how everything fits together in some kind of jigsaw puzzle. The sheer volume of original ideas in this show alone makes it worth watching.

The second is the whole point of this movie, and how it captures the essential truth of what a stag night is supposed to be. You have one wild night of partying, without your wife, of course. You do all the things you could do as a single before you settle down to married life. What is a party? It is a celebration of life. It is a wild orgy of male bonding, and you get married in the afterglow of that wild partying. You don’t get deprived of all the things you used to enjoy as a swinging single, and you don’t carry that bitterness into your married life. The movie is one of the most happening parties you’ve ever seen, and probably a great exaggeration, but it definitely is a stag party, and what it really means.

It is your license to be licentious. Nobody has to know any of the weird details. For myself, I have never consider any of these things to be wrong in of itself: partying, booze, promiscuity, gambling. It is only wrong when it is carried out to excess. One night definitely does not count as excess. It is education.

One thing about the movie is the lightness of touch. Everything and everybody is redeemed in the end. It would be ridiculous to say that this movie has a moral message, but it does have a moral centre.

One of the key scenes in the movie is when the 3 friends of the groom, who are trying to track down the missing groom, find a doctor who had treated one of them the previous nights. They try to pump him for information, try to get every possible clue out of him, even bribe him, until the doctor, exasperated, tells them to fuck off and do their detective work themselves. Thus, with no small ingenuity, we have 2 great adventures in 1: first is the legendary wild stag party itself. Second is the hilarious attempts at uncovering what happened in the wild stag party. And thus we have some kind of moral closure in the end: you make your mess, and you clean it up.

The other aspect of morality is how everybody turns out to be innocent in the end. Hangovers are always associated with guilt, but obviously the decision was made that guilt would have nothing whatsoever to do with this movie. How? You make all the characters so busy that they don’t have any time to feel guilty at all.

Most of the people turn out to have an innocent side in the end, and even the Chinese gangsters are funny. At the beginning, everybody talks about Las Vegas as some kind of a sin city, but everything turns out well.

(spoilers)
The stripper could have been a gold digger, but turns out to be a nice girl with a heart of gold. The drug dealer who swiped the ecstasy with date rape drug could have been an evil man with ulterior motives, but he turns out to be just a confused person. The brother-in-law could have been a total loser, but he turns out to be a total gambling genius who saves everybody’s skins by returning $80K to the gangsters. The casino security could have been wary of the card counters, but they manage to get away. We could have seen the decrepit state of the police and the health care system but that is whitewashed. The tiger could have mauled all the people, but gets returned to Mike Tyson safe and sound. The groom could have been kidnapped, but turns out to have been left behind on the rooftop. All the characters lead a seemingly charmed life. The wedding could have been called off, but proceeds as planned when the 4 of them get back to LA safe and sound.
(spoilers)

Some of the funniest parts of this movie take place in settings that you would not necessarily associate with Las Vegas. Like a police station, or a hospital. Some touches, like throwing in the baby add some fun to the proceedings. But it is a great idea in the movie to merge 3 worlds that roughly correspond to heaven (the real world that the 4 people live in), hell (the Dionysian excess of the stag party itself) and purgatory (the madcap scramble to uncover the events of the previous evening, and get the groom back to reality so that he can get married). Not surprisingly, the purgatory is where most of the movie is set.

In the end, it is this purgatory which proves to be an even more powerful male bonding experience than the stag party itself. And after everything is said and done, and everything is uncovered, what we have to look back on is that that night has actually provided plenty of great memories to look back upon over a lifetime. The movie is unabashedly optimistic, and suitably so, because it just whitewashes away all the bad parts, as though everything were seen through the lens of nostalgia.

Of course, I wonder what happens to the friendship after the movie ends. I heard that this hit has a sequel, but I cannot imagine this happening, because a stag party is supposed to be a once in a lifetime event. In any case, I was reading the wiki article of this movie, and it turns out that there are only 2 minor criticisms of this movie.

I don't know if people who meet at a party and have a great time should be friends for life. I could see them, and then say, "We had such a wild time. We had so much fun together". But then we live life in a completely different context, and there's nothing there. I sometimes think that it'd be better that way.

The first criticism is that the characterization is flat. This is not a big issue because, over here, plot and action are the main draws. Basically you have 1 suave guy who actually does nothing, because this is a movie where people are doing stupid things, so the clever guy doesn’t have much to do. Then you have a nerd who learns how to loosen up. Then you have an idiot who turns out in the end to have 1 special skill who saves everybody’s ass. The star of the movie, the alpha male, in a wonderful display of subversion of plot, does absolutely nothing in this movie. He is the princess in the castle waiting to get rescued.

The second drawback is the negative portrayal of Asians as gangster thugs. I’m not surprised that the guy playing the Chinese gangster is Korean. I suppose this is how Hollywood works: if you want to play a negative Asian stereotype, get a Chinese to portray a Japanese (many of the main characters in “Memoirs of a Geisha” are played by Chinese, not only because the biggest names are Chinese, but also because any Japanese brave enough to act out the characters in that show will probably never find work in Japan ever again), or a Korean to play a Chinese, or vice versa.

One more thing: Lindsay Lohan was actually offered the role of the stripper. She turned it down because she didn’t like the script. I predict that she will ruin her career, not because of the partying, not because of the irresponsible behaviour, but because she has such bad professional judgement. I suppose Heather Graham was one of the main reasons I watched this movie. I always thought that she was hot, and she was hot in Austin Powers. But she doesn’t have much to do. None of the ladies have much to do in this show: this is a stag party, remember, and all the stars are the guys, rightfully so.

I was reading up the requirements for me to graduate from my uni. It said that for any major at all, there are no courses that are compulsory. Every course is optional, but the requirements are like “you must take x courses of type y”. I felt that this movie was saying that life is a bit like that. You must have a bit of everything.

While most reviews of this movie are positive, there are quite a few people who don't get this movie. These are the people who feel that all lowbrow humour is bad. I had been sold on the idea when I was young that British humour is necessarily better, but later on I realised that this is simply people with an aristocratic mentality at work, whose sense of humour is somehow a little less functional if you don't throw in some snob appeal for good effect. I personally don't discriminate. I think that both lowbrow and highbrow humour work for me.

I also believe that most people's reactions to this movie also depend upon how much they believe that old saying that "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom". People with a overly puritanical bent would find it very hard to understand this, and consequently they will miss the whole point.

Yes, there is something religious and spiritual about orgiastic merry making. You can't do it every day, of course, because it loses its effect very quickly. But every now and then, you need to know what it is like. You need to get seriously drunk, seriously wasted, have your brain fucked in at least one way to understand more about yourself, because that is how you get acquainted with some ideas that your brain ordinarily censors itself.

I didn’t regret watching this movie: it was entertaining from beginning to the end. The Mike Tyson cameo, I felt, was a little cynical, because he’s basically using this movie to put a positive slant on his reputation. He forgives everybody in the end, reflecting on his own life as “I did some crazy things in my own time” or something like that. Fine, except that those crazy things included the rape of a girl.

What I did get reminded of is that my life is actually very small. It’s nice to get jolted out of your complacency like that. It’s not all fun and games. I’ve been to stag nights that I didn’t enjoy. I think, almost every single time I got seriously drunk (I can actually count the times on one hand – I’m a good drinker and alcohol in Singapore is expensive so you do the maths) I’ve done at least 1 thing that I’m ashamed of and even regret. I don’t really consider it such a fantastic thing to lead a “happening” life. But sometimes I need to step out of my totally boring salaryman existence. I’ve had a lot of great opportunities and choices before me but have perversely not grabbed hold of them. I’m not a person who gets bored easily but I am leading a boring life. It’s been a long time since I felt like my life was going forward.

I watched this movie on an off day. But somewhat perversely when the lights came back on after the movie was over I was thinking about a few thorny problems that would face me when I get back to work tomorrow morning.

Three random pieces

1. I think that when you’re doing something – anything, actually, there are 3 stages – the beginning, the middle and the end. The beginning is usually quite rough, and you’re trying to learn the ropes, trying to be good at what you’re supposed to do. The middle is more comfortable, you’ve found a group of people you’re comfortable with, you’re getting by in your work. The end is not very comfortable, knowing that another new beginning is ahead of you, trying to make that new beginning happen, having to do a lot of things at work that you’ve been putting off because you were never comfortable doing them in the first place.

2. I asked my grandmother if she had seen a total eclipse in her life. She said yes, and during those days she lived in a village. They were taking out their gongs, pots and pans and banging them over and over to scare away the dog who was eating the sun. I asked her before or after the war, she said, after, when your father was a kid.

I asked them, didn't they already know about astronomy? even during those days it was fairly well known. It was only around 10 years before they put a man on the moon. Well you don't know about these things.

3. Played basketball with Sniper and gang. It was a typical game, no better or worse than anything else. Did 1 or 2 stupid things, as usual. Towards the end of the evening, we had sniper trying to pull my leg, almost as though he suddenly remembered that he forgot that he had to insult me at least once every week. I looked at him and I thought for a while.

It didn’t rank particularly high on the list of nasty things he’s said to me over the years. But I’ve had enough. I’m quitting that scene for good. There were good times over those 5.5 years but they're all over. If he’s getting difficulties getting his team together that’s his fucking problem. People who are friends of his don’t tend to stay that way for long.

Football (non) betting season 2 week 1

I didn’t bet on anything this weekend. I was about to go to the Singapore Pools shop when I felt tired and went to sleep instead.

Anyway, here’s what I would have bet on this week.

Croatia to beat Belarus. I would have won this.
USA to eat ball against Mexico. I was queasy about backing USA against Mexico. Surely enough, USA got beaten by 1 goal.
Chelsea to beat Hull: this would have been very close.
Fulham to beat Portsmouth: this happened, but it was close
Liverpool to beat Tottenham: we’ll see about this.
Man U to beat Birmingham: ditto.
Everton to eat ball vs Arsenal: normally you bet on eat ball when you don’t really know the outcome of a match, and when both sides are perceived to be equally strong. This was emphatically not the case, as the final score was Everton 1 Arsenal 6.

Peak Oil

Every now and then when I use my mother's van I will chip in for fuel. Not very often - I think it's expensive. But I still drive, slightly less often than once a week. And since the tank was nearing empty when I last drove it, I decided to go fill up the tank again.

So I took the Shell card from the other car, and drove down to the petrol kiosk. I parked it there, let the attendant fill it up, and went to pay up. When I got to the cashier, there were 2 pleasant surprises. First, I got a free large slurpee. (For those of you familiar with 7-11, "large" really means small because the only other size is "giant". But I wasn't complaining.) The other pleasant surprise is that they told me that I could redeem $20 worth of diesel from the shell card. Which I did, since that would lessen the pinch a bit. So a full tank for just $27, and a slurpee thrown in.

And I was feeling real good about all that until this morning, when I saw this. Yes, fellars, it's true. Peak oil is not an invention by crazy people. It is really true. Some people think it has already happened. There will be a day, and for most of us, it will take place in our lifetime, when most of it is gone, and there is a permanent shortage. So either people quickly discover a new source of energy, or ... can you imagine what it's like? You think it was terrible, in Iraq, people killing and fighting each other over oil? What's going to happen will make that look very very trivial in comparison.

Yeh, you might say. But aren't the oil prices back to normal? No, not really. What happened was that the credit crunch was a stay of execution. First, the slowdown in the economy means that demand for oil dropped. Secondly, somebody probably persuaded the Arabs that we need world peace, so please pump out as much oil as you possibly could, because we aren't smart enough to deal with two crises at the same time. So oil prices went all the way down. But sooner or later, it will go back up to what it was like in 2006 / 2007. And then we'll see.

Yes, don't try to deny it. Most people are in denial, and the shittier the situation, the more vehement the denial. They denied that World War II was going to happened - that's why it happened, because if enough people believed that it was going to happen, it wouldn't happen. They would have stopped it, stopped all the mistakes that led to it.

Well, whatever. Yeah yeah. Toodle loo...

Biking

I was a biker for a year. It was my last year in the U. I took over the bike that my housemate had owned. I was living in the same place for the last 3 years and I only realised belatedly that a bike would have drastically improved my quality of life. Stupid stupid me….

I had held back from getting a bike because I saw that much of my campus was on hilly ground. Yes, but most of the campus also lies on a plateau, so if you avoid certain routes, and if you avoid cycling into town, it’s quite manageable to bike. This is certainly not NUS where every single road is sloped.

Yes, I wear a helmet. I used to joke to my friend Nat that Indians have something in their DNA that makes them persistently engage in risky behaviour in traffic. (cf the infamous Indian Jaywalker). Well now I see he doesn’t believe in helmets either. I wore one because I saw all the bikers in my school wear one, so I didn’t give it a second thought. And it’s not like I was ever going to sweat into that helmet because I’m never there during the summer, and any other part of the year, that helmet’s going to keep you warm.

On the first day I had the bike, my old housemate had chained it to a pipe in the basement. I didn’t know how to use a bicycle lock (and I think, today, I’ve also forgotten) so I had to ask a nice new housemate of mine to please teach me how the thing is done, and also please do not tell anybody the code.

I remember my old housemate once falling off her bike and getting grazed and whatever. It never became a problem with me. I never fell off my bike.

The bike was never about me loving the great outdoors and stuff. It was strictly about getting from point A to B. Yes, it is quite a bitch to be biking around in the slush, and you have to be very careful if there is ice around. But the area was generally very well maintained. The roads are well salted and everything. The rides were quite pleasant. I never need an iPod (and anyhow they didn’t exist in those days) because I can play Bill Evans piano solos in my head from memory so it was a good companion to my biking.

There was one time I was biking from the computer lab back to my place at 3 in the morning, and the whole place was under a blanket of snow. I thought to myself, “this is the most desolate place in the world”.

Blizzards though, are a different thing. I had to go bike my way to class in the middle of a blizzard, and by the time I got there, my pants were all drenched. I didn’t know where to park my bike because the bike park was under 1 foot of snow, but I chained the bike to something anyway. That was quite some experience.

I tend to struggle a bit when I am climbing up slopes. I avoid steeper slopes, but there was a medium slope in front of the engineering building. Once, I was cycling too far out and some redneck with a big beard and a big pickup (cliché I know but it did happen) nearly bumped into me. As I cycled on, he drove his truck alongside and screamed at us “bloody students” for endangering him and his children. I was thinking, yeh, I’m the dickhead but aren’t I going to be the one doing the dying when something bad happens?

Fortunately none of these things happened to me.

The academic year that I was biking was also the time when I learnt how to drive. Yes, I knew I was going to learn driving while in the States, and far away from the scoundrels who overcharge in Singapore but I waited 3 years to get this simple thing done. I’m such a procrastinator. I will tell you about it some day, just not today.

Thus concludes the first and probably only posting you will ever see about biking on my blog. I know that (cough cough) certain others can write reams and reams about it, but that is beyond my ability.