The Long Dawn of Happiness

Sukhothai was nowhere as impressive as Angkor or Baalbek. (Why the latter example came to mind in particular, I don't quite know.)

The Buddha images were elegant, the lotus-bud chedi tips graceful, the generous reservoirs of water surrounding the wats serene paragons of purity, but the whole place felt ... somewhat small. The standing Buddha at Wat Chetuphon may have towered high above the surrounding countryside, and Wat Mahathat did indeed occupy a suitably large compound for its importance, but still the ruins of Sukhothai, as a whole, seem less grand than befitting the proud capital of the first Siamese kingdom. The structures (or, at least, their restorations) were built out of normal-sized bricks, not the huge monumental blocks of stone that make up the temples of Angkor or Baalbek. The scale of the structures, while large, is human rather than monumental. And while the place has been designated a "Historical Park" and these are undoubtedly ruins, they somehow don't feel quite abandoned enough to be bona fide ruins. The place feels too close-to-earth to be impressive in the same way as Angkor or Baalbek.
But maybe that was the point. Sukhothai's achievements and strengths were human rather than monumental, and its legacy lives on not in the form of awe-inspiring but abandoned ruins, but rather as a transmuted but living influence.

Trundling

Like the noise an intercity bus makes going slowly down the highway. Trundle, trundle, trundle ...

Trepidation

Tremulous agitation. Hence "intrepid" should carry the sense of  泰然自若

Insomnia

The last time in Bangkok, my guesthouse room was noisy 24 hours a day due to traffic from Rama IV just a few metres away and an all-night noodle stall downstairs. This time, my guesthouse room was noisy throughout the night due to the nightlife off Sukhumvit, but rather quiet in the morning when everyone was having their hangovers. I'm not complaining because both times I could sleep anyway.
But it did bring to mind someone's comment that Singapore still had some way to go before becoming a sleepless city. So maybe Bangkok is doing much better in this area. But I still don't get why it's so great to be a sleepless city. Since when was insomnia a good thing? Sleep is necessary rest, and it's just foolish to try and push oneself to keep going with as little sleep as possible. Now if some of a city's denizens wish to sleep in the day and carry on with their lives at night, that's perfectly fine. But if the number is small, it is only natural that the services available in the city at night are correspondingly sparser. No need to deliberately try and push for more nocturnal services to encourage more people to become nocturnal. Right?

Most Random Decision Ever

One day I'll top this one. Maybe.

Random Coincidence #2718

S uvarnabhum i
S ukhotha i
S hangha i
(Blame inconsistent application of RTGS.)

(Belated) Happy 200th!

Credit Where Due

Soon Marina East is going to be the New Downtown, but at the moment it is still a giant construction site. There are the towers of the Marina Bay Sands casino IR rising from the ground, the tunnels for the Marina Coastal Expressway being bored underground, scaffolds for future skyscrapers being erected and filled in, and lots of dust flying around. There are also lots and lots of foreign construction workers around. It's almost scary.
But I'm not trying to bash the Gahmen's immigration policies here. Rather, I would like to raise this point: Shouldn't these people be recognised for building Singapore's future? When Gahmen ministers go around parading their achievements ("I was instrumental in turning Marina Bay into the New Downtown area" or "I conceived of the casinos IRs" or whatever), shouldn't they share the credit equally with all those humble busyworkers who actually created what would otherwise be mere plans on pieces of paper? Of course the ministers would argue that the vision counts for much more, but what good is a vision that is never realised? And why, then, should those who make the vision a concrete reality be given short shrift?
The prevailing National Indoctrination Education narrative celebrates the hard work of coolies and construction workers in the past, and tells us that Singapore was built up from their contributions. Acknowledging their contributions is the least we could do to show our gratitude for them, and indeed it is a shame that many of these people were not at all recognised for their contributions in their lifetime. There is no reason why similar recognition should not be forthcoming now. To deny it on the niggling grounds of nationality would be narrow-minded in the extreme.

Low Person Density Republic

The Serenissima has about 5 million souls squeezed onto about 600 square kilomteres. The Republic of Please Don't Rush has maybe 7 million spread out over an area almost 400 times as large.
Maybe that's why everything here is so small and laid-back. When the population is so thinly spread-out, you wouldn't expect very much suburban sprawl or dense concrete jungles. Probably that's why even Vientiane felt sleepy and more or less petered out after less than 15 minutes on the city bus. And when there aren't so many fellow human beings competing for resources, people can afford to relax. And take things nice and easy and maintain perfect equianimity. So they do.

It's quite striking how visibly slower the pace of life can be. Just watch the locals walking along the street. No. Dawdling along the street.

It's English, except it's Thai.

An American described sepak takraw as "the sport that's soccer, except it's volleyball." Something similar could be said of the language spoken by the guides at the Jim Thompson House. It's English, except it's Thai. The words and sentences were from English, but spoken to the rhythm and intonation of a tonal language with isolating tendencies. It certainly didn't sound like English. 
Notwithstanding, the guide's English was actually quite good. The place itself was a most elegantly-appointed house museum off an otherwise nondescriptly dusty soi. It was built by a farang, and most of the visitors today appear to be farang. Whatever was I doing there.

In a Nutshell

Progress is overrated. I choose serenity.

Situation Briefing

Nobody is very happy with the verdict. (Though it is hard to see how the judges could have done less badly than the messy compromise they produced.) But after two years, a lot of disruptive protests and two extremely embarrassing fracas, most of the players are wary of being very disruptive. The only ones who are keen on violence or turmoil are probably people who are trying to stir up tensions to further their own ends. 浑水摸鱼的人。In a way, such people are like terrorists. Their objective is to create panic, to make people nervous. Usually they don't have enough resources to do this without the aid of their most helpful allies, natural flightiness and a media focused on bad news. So while there is a risk of disruption and possibly violence, it is smaller than the news might suggest.
To abort would be to give in, but you must be aware that by going ahead you are taking a small but very real risk. The situation on the ground will be complex and subtle. Large parts of the city will be as safe as ever; some parts may be at a slight risk of more grenade attacks; a few select locations may be evident targets.
You are not entering a war zone: far from it. It is still a country at peace. You just need to keep your eyes and ears wide open, your brain switched on, your schedule flexible and durable enough, and you'll be fine.
(Also, remember that in some situations running away from the grenade is more effective than the SAF anti-grenade drill.)

Best Workplace Introduction Ever

"Everyone in this school is failing. Nobody cares. It's okay." [big smile]

The Buck Stops There

The magic number is 21,100. In the interests of this overpopulated, overcrowded Earth, I actually hope there doesn't need to be a second time.
Update. Day 1 and there's a constitutional crisis. Awesome.

Signs of Independence

The Roman script on the road signs in Laos and Cambodia (where they exist) reads "Rue", "Avenue" or "Quai". Thailand's signs just say "Thanon". It's a tiny but persistent reminder that while Siam may have waned and waxed, it has managed to maintain a subtle but unmistakeable independence from the prevailing Powers.
That's what genuine independence is like: quiet, understated and confident. Not brash and loud like what newly-independent nation-states tend to do.

Good Morning

... from as far from the busywork-preoccupied global village as could possibly be.

I wonder what it was meant to say.

May all that could possibly be bad go away, and everything good come to you ... and thank you for coming ...

We need to talk about your stopover

Either I have very strong nerves, or I am just an extremely blockheaded idiot. I suppose I'll find out which view shall prevail when the plane touches down at Suvarnabhumi. Maybe earlier, but I hope not.

Daily Dose of Perspective

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
-- Carl Sagan 

"Is it your country?"

Well, no. Because I don't have a country in the same palpable sense that you do. Countries are mere legal fictions; passports are only bureaucratic conveniences.
Home is other people. There isn't a place I call home. There are bits of home scattered around. Some places happen to have a slightly higher concentration of them, but that's all there is to it. It doesn't really make those places special in any (other) way.
At the moment, there happen to be some faint bits of home where you would rather not schedule any stopovers. But never mind. You'll never understand what I'm talking about.

Corollary to Riposte

So, if you haven't realised it yet, failure is not an option. You can either work hard, or die horribly. (Well, not literally. Maybe not.) Good luck.

Riposte, Part Two

And no, I will not prepare a contingency plan for this. If you're planning an Everest ascent, you don't usually put in a contingency plan to scale an easier peak somewhere else just in case you couldn't make your original target. Well, you could, but it would be terribly lame.

Riposte

Someone said (today) that mathematicians are usually intensely concentrated people who, to put it bluntly, do not really have a life. I say, look at von Neumann.

Sunset over Jurong Island

The Monster of Concrete

Vientiane has no pretensions to being Paris. That's probably just a colourful lie told by foreigners. With enough imagination (or Beerlao, or preferably both), Avenue Lane Xang could conceivably vaguely resemble the Avenue Champs-Elysees, and Patuxai the Arc de Triomphe. Just in case somebody does actually try to imagine that, though, the introduction to the Patuxai, on a concrete slab on the ground floor, tells us that, because construction was "never complete due to the country's turbulent history", "[f]rom a closer distance, it appears even less impressive, like a monster of concrete." In this age of slick overmarketing of tourist non-attractions, that kind of frankness deserves some credit.

Give Up Your Seat. Please?

In most of East Asia, signs near on public transportation appeal to your conscience: they invite you to "please give up your seats to those who need them more." In America, the signs state baldly that "federal law requires that these seats be given to seniors and those with disabilities." One sign of a more legalistic society. The latter has a somewhat disclamatory air too: it sounds as though the transport company really doesn't want to deprive you of your seat, but was forced to do so by Washington.

The signs on the Bangkok Metro show a elderly person, a pregnant woman, children, and a bald guy in a saffron robe (took me a few seconds to figure that was a monk.) The bit of colour in a otherwise monochrome sign was striking.

Walking the Big Mango

Being a flâneur in the tropics is a terrible idea, unless maybe one adopted a Mediterranean schedule ... one usually ends up like the inside of a tropical fruit: wet and sticky. Bah. I remember reading one traveller's lament about how the Skytrain has "turned parts of Silom and Sukhumvit into sunless chasms." That isn't necessarily a bad thing in this weather.

Sathorn was boring. Boring. BORING. Well, maybe not that bad, but walking the length of it was definitely not worth having to endure the tropical heat and humidity. Ditto Silom, Surawong and the long stretch of road along one side of the Chulalongkorn University campus. They were all sort of generically bland with nothing very striking along the way. 

The shophouses of Chinatown and Charoen Krung were at least less bland, and the tree-lined canals of Dusit and lively Lumphini Park were definitely more interesting to walk through.

Can you imagine if all of Bangkok was more like Dusit and Lumphini Park? Instead of ten-lane roads you'd have maybe four-lane ones, and the space in the middle formerly given to six more turned into a canal. And then there'd be plenty more greenery by the roadsides. Sure there could still be high-rise concrete buildings---it would be flatly impossible to pack in eight million people without them---but they wouldn't be the only show in town. It would be like some sort of cross between Singapore and Amsterdam. It would be really nice and liveable. Maybe it'll happen one day. In the far, far, far future.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

The more I learn, the more I marvel at how completely ignorant I have been, and will no doubt continue to be ...

Sound Medical Advice

Travellers to the Mekong region are advised to have quantities of three to five kinds of inactivated viruses inserted into their bodies, and to ingest a synthetic analogue of a bitter toxin on a weekly basis. The toxin may cause nausea, vomitting, lung failure, depression, seizures and suicidal intent, but these are not reasons to stop its regular intake.*

* Actual potential risks associated with Lariam, though not so common as to be alarming.

Bad Pun of the Day

When you're participating in a marathon, running into people takes on an altogether more literal meaning.

Fluke Finish of 42.195km

Now that it's done, I still don't know why I wanted to run a marathon. At least the feeling at the finishing line was priceless ... especially coming after an epic two-hour battle with muscle aches.
How do people complete ultramarathons? I can't even imagine ...
Mind over body, by the way, is quite a misleading cliché. It should be mind and body. Because mental strength does matter, but if the flesh is just too weak, sheer determination alone can't make miracles happen.

沨

My name is apparently quite a musical one. Among other things, it can be used to describe the sound of flowing water, the sound of wind, lingering music (think 琴) or thunderous roaring.

Tuesday

Monday was someone's birthday, but then he was learning to navigate masses of steel and aluminum along bitumen surfaces. So the lunch was on Tuesday instead, at Maxwell Food Centre. What a choice of place, but there was a famous chicken rice stall there. True to reputation the queue stretched all the way around the corner, and we waited around 15 minutes before reaching the front. Then we took another 5 minutes to find a seat. (Tissue paper packets used to chope seats are so very irritating. Grr.) The chicken rice was quite outstanding, though it could've been even better. The birthday boy commented that it was "over-rated". Possibly, yes.
After lunch we visited the Singapore City Gallery, since it was just next door and admission was free and both of us happen to be unemployed and therefore rather free at the moment. If you ever start to doubt that Singapore is still very much controlled by the Government, the Gallery is a good place to be reminded otherwise. Where else in the world does government plan and regulate land use so tightly, with such detail and thoroughness? Manhattan and the neighbourhoods of San Francisco arose entirely organically, and Europe's grand old city centres resulted more from historical evolution than government fiat, and both continue to be regulated with a light hand. Here, though, the whole environment, down to that bench in the park and the surrounding plants, is micromanaged by the government. This place is a SimCity on more than just a surface level.

State of the Desk

It's actually clear! It's the dawn of a new era!

Just see the difference from before ...

Balls to the Wall

Even with the murky waters of Cold War geopolitics which gave birth to and sustained the Wall in mind, and the tremendous social and economic dislocations that have accompanied the collapse of socialist economic systems and German reunification, we should still celebrate the fall of the Wall.

Because even though, in the poisonous atmosphere of Cold War mistrust, the Wall helped to avert a more serious confrontation between the USSR and the US, even though the US may have acquiesced in its construction and maintenance precisely for this reason, even though German reunification in the wake of its fall has been less than an unqualified blessing, it has always been fundamentally a stopgap measure born, at root, of misunderstanding, mistrust, miscommunication.
Miscommunication, misunderstanding and mistrust. Why should the East German regime have stopped free movement of people to, and from, the West, if it did not mistrust the West? If they did not want to restrict communication with the West? And such mistrust was born precisely out of miscommunication and misunderstanding between the superpowers, whose wariness of each other escalated out of all proportion into a worldwide shadow-play of power which left grotesque monuments the world over, of which the Wall was only one.
It was not only a monument to mistrust, but also a stopgap measure unsustainable in the long run. When there are such great economic and socio-political differentials as existed at the time between East and West Berlin, it is ultimately futile to try and stop the free movement of people in the direction of the differential. It's just like trying to stop a current flowing across a great potential difference, or, to take a slightly closer analogy, trying to prevent goods from moving to where prices for them are very much higher. It could be done, but you'd have to expend a lot of effort and resources in the process. So much effort, sometimes, it wouldn't make sense to try.
So even if the common portrayal of the fall of the Wall as being symbolic of the triumph of democracy and freedom over tyranny is romanticised and oversimplified, still we should see the event as a vindication of common sense and of free movement and open communication. Still something worth celebrating.

For All the Wrong Reasons

I never expected writing a cover letter to be so exhausting. Either it was a misguided decision, or I just need thicker skin.

Leaving a Mark

If you happen to pass the RJ Amphitheatre some day, you may notice the beds of pebbles in the concrete planters jutting in from the perimeter. More careful observation would reveal that some of them (much more than just the two samples shown above) have smileys drawn on them in correction fluid. That was the mark I've left on my school. He he.

Sensitive

Being sensitive could mean being especially prone to be affected, being vulnerable in a way. But it could also mean being particularly quick to perceive and accommodate. A suggestion that vulnerability leads to empathy, perhaps. Or, from an etymological point of view, that the ability and inclination to sense and feel lie at the root of both ...

Asses for Zebras

When the zebras at Gaza City's Marah Land Zoo passed away, there was very little prospect of finding a replacement---a sad commentary on how restricted and contrived everyday life in the Gaza Strip has become. The zookeepers, though, came up with the ingenious solution of having two donkeys stand in for zebras by painting them with zebra stripes. The fact that the acting zebras are still drawing the crowds suggests that the zoo is still more a source of entertainment (look, it's a zebra!) than a place for real learning (zebras are equine mammals which live on the African savannah and etc.)
On an off note, the Old Portuguese zevra, which gave rise to the zebra's name in English and many other languages, did mean "wild ass". So the choice of stand-in was perhaps not so inexplicable ...

Narcocracy

Isn't it ironic that the word can mean both a group responsible for enforcing laws governing (usually against) narcotics, and a dominant or governing group whose wealth derives from those very same substances? Might this not be a critique of how criminalisation does not work and is prone to corruption, a subtle suggestion that other approaches, such as legalisation, might work better?

Why Doctors Earn a Lot

A few Saturdays ago, due to exceptionally poor braking technique on the bicycle, I ended up with some pretty nasty, though ultimately harmless, injuries. As luck would have it, the batch of recruits we were taking then were due to have their Graduation march and parade the following Monday. It seemed to me a very bad idea to try and wear a LBV when there was a big open wound on one shoulder, so I took medical leave for the first time since enlistment. Geez.
I had to pay the doctor a good fifty dollars. It seems terribly expensive. The doctor made only the most superficial and general observations, prescribed a bunch of non-essential medications, most of which I didn't even use in the end, and breezed through any questions. Not to put down the medical profession, but I could have done this particular call myself. The only difference would have been that I wouldn't have had the authority to make out a certificate requesting medical leave. Damnit. I guess it's the price to pay to prove yourself a genuine sick case.
Does it have to be? If integrity were a more common thing in society, perhaps we could trust people to recommend themselves for sick leave without abusing the authority---but of course, History has demonstrated that it is not so wise to trust so much in human nature. That does not rule out exceptions in specific cases, when perhaps a supervisor is willing to accept his/her charge's claims of not feeling well as genuine without a professional opinion, based on the specific circumstances. In general, however, it would seem that the monopoly of the medical profession over medical leave is indeed a necessary evil. It is not a perfect solution---a physician might be inclined to give medical leave out freely to family or friends, for instance---but it's a roughly workable on, and better than nothing. Even if the added content of the "professional" opinion doesn't amount to much, the fact that the patient was willing to go to the trouble and expense of getting it supports the thesis that the medical problem was genuine.

Unworldly Landscapes

The icefields of Patagonia seem almost unreal from above, and I imagine on the ground too: so vastly different from the habitats we are familiar with that they may as well be a world apart, a landscape from a more distant part of the cosmos. (Or, perhaps, they were indeed sculpted by a Slartibartfast from an extraterrestrial, more advanced civilisation.)

So do, come to think of it, Arizona's huge and ochre-hued Painted Desert and surrounding mesas. These preserve the remains of an earlier age of life---one of dinosaurs---very much alien to us. But then this was the Earth millions of years ago, not some distant planet. Likewise, during Ice Ages in times long before humankind flourished, large parts of our planet would have borne more resemblance to the icefields of Patagonia than to the grasslands and forests we are familiar with today.
So these landscapes, so relatively rare on the Earth today and thus unfamiliar and "unworldly" to us, belong to the Earth no less than our dear old meadows and woods and tropical rainforests. They are only strange and distant to us parochial humans, in space and, much more, in time. The "world" encompassed in the adjective is a very much anthrocentric one, specific and limited in time and place.