Present Sources of Bad Karma

1. Still being a complete pain in the ass to parents.
2. Voice getting even flatter and more monotonous.
3. H1N1 putting random obstacles onto the FOE.
4. Extreme time scarcity.
5. Sections of Parliament are in a revisionist mode again (see 12)
6. Lousy finger discipline on the keyboard. (see 4)
   
7. Rapidly fading mathematical proficiency. (see 4)
   
8. US$24,000 annual gap to fill even after Princeton finaid. Plus, need to reapply for finaid every year.
   
9. Scholarship applications not going particularly well. (see 8)
   
10. Tehran becoming a bloody mess.
    
11. Slight possibility of H1N1/A mutating into something far nastier. (see 3)
12. Opium addiction problem

Do you feel you are a Singaporean?

Yes. In fact, I believe my identity is quintessentially Singaporean. Just like the Singaporean nation, I am not autochthonous, feel divided between East and West, have a lingering sense of incomplete, missing or confused identity, and periodically feel the need to make grandoise statements to the opposite effect.

Despite Everything ...

The Geography of Thought

Does your surrounding geography shape your thought patterns? Would there be fundamental differences in the worldviews of, for instance, the inhabitants of Singapore, being islanders surrounded by the sea, a resident of Avignon, being a landlubber living in a wide river valley surrounded by hills and a resident of Beirut, who would see either the sea or mountains, depending on which way he turned his head?
Certainly it might affect the perception of geographical features: so that I, having lived here all these years, think of the sea as a sort of inalienable existence, whereas mountains are more incidental features of the land. Mountains may exist here, may not exist there, for various geographical reasons. But it is not possible, to my mind at some level, to conceive of the Earth without a vast sea. Someone who has stayed in the mountains deep inland all his life might well think differently. Mountains, to him, would be an essential part of life; the sea is a mere incidental curiosity.
I wonder how this could extend to other realms of thought, if it does?
At a lower level, does the view out the window affect your thought patterns? Might people who see sweeping seaviews or panoramas of the city every morning think in larger terms than those who see pretty but well-framed canal views; and how far would staring at the ventiliation shafts of the next building every day encourage cynicism and negative thoughts?

A Zero Emissions Mirage?

In view of the general, though not entirely accurate, perception of China as underdeveloped and lacking in environmental awareness, the existence of China-based companies, such as Emission Zero, which help other companies manage and reduce their carbon footprints was quite surprising.
At the moment their clients comprise of two small businesses in Shanghai---"a drop in the ocean" doesn't even begin to describe how small a profile that is in a country of 1.3 billion---and they've apparently been up for quite a few years already (their website says copyright 2006). And those businesses are niche ones (2,000 yuan a night is kind of expensive for a hotel). Maybe it's just a flash in the pan at the moment. But then it's hard to be sure ...their website may be surprisingly navigable compared to most Chinese ones, but when it comes to paucity of useful information it is perfectly on par. What on Earth does the London office do? Is the company in any way related to another of exactly the same name but headquartered in Birmingham? What exactly does the company do? (Apparently it sets up accounting systems to keep track of clients' carbon footprint and offsets, but it's never written out quite clearly).
So in the absence of further information, we conclude that it is a brief, but potentially unreliable flicker, of what may be coming.

Expletive

Apparently it doesn't just mean any old profanity, but specifically a censored profanity. And before that, it referred to words, or other things, that were quite meaningless and only existed to fill space. Damn.

(A Long Ride to) Paris

Finally time to leave Amsterdam ... and we had already booked train tickets to Paris a few days ago. Unfortunately, prior reservation did not spare us a few hiccups.
Ten minutes before departure at 9:54, with the InterCity train due to depart for Brussels nowhere in sight, a notification appears on the display board at the platform: delay of approximately 30 minutes expected. Okay. No worries ... except according to the schedule we had 32 minutes to change trains in Brussels. With the delay that becomes 2 minutes. Two minutes to run across a dozen platforms with luggage in tow is ... but never mind. Maybe the train will catch up and manage to make up for the delay. So we wait.
Forty minutes later an InterCity train shows up, stops at the other end of the platform full of "Niet Instappen" (Not stopping - do not board) signs, pauses for a few minutes without anyone alighting or boarding, then promptly drives off again. The notification is updated: 40 minutes delay expected. We wonder whether we would be allowed to exchange our Thalys tickets for the next train at Brussels. Another ten minutes later, the same train drives through the station in the other direction and goes right off where it came from. We wait some more.
Yet another ten minutes later, an overnight train from Eastern Europe pulls into the station and stops at our platform. The display boards go into a minor frenzy. Our train, when it does come, will now stop at the next platform instead.
Finally, almost an hour after it was due, the train arrives. The passengers board and the train departs. As our train leaves we see the 10:54 InterCity for Brussels arriving at the next plaform, the overnight train having already left the station some time before.
It is mostly a smooth ride. At Rotterdam quite a lot of people get on and the train is almost fully-seated. At Rosendaal, the last stop before Belgium, the train stays stationary for almost 20 minutes. We are definitely going to miss our connecting train. When's the next train to Paris?

At Antwerp many of the passengers get off, and the train becomes sparsely occupied and much more comfortable. Then at Mechelen the train stops for a long time again. The intercom starts to crackle in Dutch, then French. Everyone starts getting off. The train is turning back for Amsterdam, apparently. Passengers headed for Brussels are advised to board the train at platform 4. Hey, that was the one that left Amsterdam at 10:54! Oh, well. The train is very crowded, having to bear the load normally distributed across two trips. Standing room only for relatively slower newcomers like us. But no matter, it's less than an hour to Brussels.
We reach Brussels almost one and a half hours behind schedule. The Thalys service crew instantly understand the situation (probably a few people before us were in the same situation; maybe it is a regular occurence: the Brussels - Amsterdam InterCity is apparently not very punctual, because the rail lines it uses are very busy, its rolling stock is wearing down, and upgrading works in the form of a dedicated high-speed line are falling behind schedule); we manage to get a place the next train to Paris, but without a seat. The train is even more crowded than Mechelen - Brussels, with people cramming in even the spaces around the doors and luggage racks, between the seating areas. We end up like them, almost like modern-day refugees, sitting on our own suitcases next to the carriage door. Finally arrive in Paris almost two hours behind schedule and quite peeved with ... is it the Belgian or Dutch railway company which runs Amsterdam - Brussels?

There wasn't really much time left before we had to leave for Charles-de-Gaulle airport ... it almost seems like we were headed for the airport and made a diversion to Paris just to have lunch / dinner at a Left Bank brasserie (it was rather too late for lunch, but early for dinner). Which tasted excellent, by the way. Western stalls at hawker centres here, not to mention the caterers to Tekong, really seem poor imitators by comparison ... but then again that's like comparing a mass-reproduced replica to an artisan original.
After the meal we walked a bit along the Seine up to the Notre Dame ... then it started raining quite heavily and we ducked back into the Métro. The Notre Dame was quite impressive, though somewhat shorter than I had imagined it (strange).

The other buildings around it on the Île de la Cité, as well as those lining the banks of the Seine, were equally impressively grand, and the quays themselves spacious and magnanimous. Magnanimous? That's probably more of a Chinese than English expression. 大方、气派大。To project a sense of ... generosity, with physical space and perhaps in a more general sense too.

The whole city projected a similar sense of grandeur. The Louvre seemed vast even from the outside, and the Tulières looked nothing like the small, cozy garden I had imagined while playing Mussorgsky. More like something on par with one of the imperial 园林 in Beijing. Even some of the underground RER stations were spacious and well-lit, and not at all like the usual cramped spaces associated with subway stations ... the place-names suggest various corners of the Republic and the Empire and Europe--as much the result of Napoleonic and other conquests on the Continent as of European unity, or perhaps even more so--, and of many, many aspects of French history. Its appearance alone leaves one in no doubt that this is a cosmopolitan place with a rich, colourful past, and a city of considerable wealth and power.

Speaking of the RER, the Paris underground transit system is really a labyrinth. A vast, often confusing labyrinth. Imagine more than 14 lines, plus separate suburban rail lines, in a city not much larger, geographically, than Singapore. No wonder the place has the most closely-spaced stations in the world. The individual stations, many of which host two or more lines, are in themselves labyrinths. There are separate tunnels linking the platforms for each line, and between the platforms and the fare gate(s) and station exits. Moreover, to cope with the vast flow of human traffic (4.5 million passengers a day), there are two separate tunnels between some places, one for each direction of travel. Despite the complexity the whole system operates at a very fast pace, or maybe it was just rush hour. Scarcely has one train left the platform than the next one is already arriving.
It was raining the whole time we were there ... in fact, had been all the way since Brussels. On the bright side, a rainbow appeared, briefly, to bid us farewell at the airport. It was so bright, even the secondary rainbow was clearly visible. Magical.

Look! Windmills!

There're probably more modern electricity-generating wind-turbines in the Netherlands nowadays than old-fashioned water-pumping or grain-grinding windmills. But the old windmill is more than just a tourist cliché. It is also representative of the Netherlands' Herculean national battle against the sea to keep their very low and flat lands dry. "God made the Dutch, but the Dutch made Holland" was one way of putting it, but I prefer the province of Zeeland's motto: Luctor et emergo---I struggle and I emerge.
Kinderdijk, where the 19 windmills were, was quite a scenic spot. Canals and green fields and a broad, broad horizon. Rotterdam, an hour away by bus, was somewhat less interesting, although the Erasmusburg, for one, was quite striking.

And then there was the Overblaak development ... there are actually flats in those cubes. It looked and felt bizarre ... somewhat like a beehive, really, with its closely-knit honeycomb of cells.

Den Haag

Home of the ICJ. The Vredespaleis (Peace Palace---what a nice name) seems to be built in the same style as Amsterdam's Centraal station. Did Carnegie really donate that building? Or maybe they just meant he donated the funds to have the place built.
The seat of the Dutch governemnt was pretty much as described---spread-out and somewhat disorganised. A brief amble from Centraal Station brought us to the Binnenhof. In the large public square in front there was a statue of William the First; later we saw his likeness in several places around the city. The Netherland's first king, I told my parents, not entirely correctly it seems. William the First was only Stadhouder of Holland, the first from the House of Orange to hold the post. He is known as the Vader des Vaderlands not for being the first king or anything of that sort, but rather for leading the Dutch revolt against the Spanish that led to the founding of the United Provinces. Republicanism, it would seem, has deep roots in the Netherlands.

Still the House of Orange has done more here than provide royal entertainment. The Royal Picture Collection housed in the Maruitshuis had an excellent selection of Dutch Masters; Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring was much more striking and vivid than the Mona Lisa. Escher in het Paleis is sadly closed on Tuesdays, so we walked some more along the Lange Voorhout, and quite a few blocks north to the Vredespaleis, before feeling lazy and thanking our lucky stars we could take a tram back.
Courtesy of the wonder of strippenkaarten. The system can work even better than ez-link style chipcards in some respects: no worries about software problems, or forgetting to validate when alighting. The disadvantage is that it does not so much eliminate these problems as shift their burden onto the human side: now people have to figure out how to calculate their fares, and it's easier to cheat the system. It's big enough a problem for the Netherlands to plan to eventually replace them with OV-chipkaarten, something very much like an ez-link.
Den Haag is part of the Randstad, the mega-urban-agglomeration that is home to nearly half the Dutch population and one of the biggest conurbations in Europe, along with Amsterdam, Rotterdam and a few other major cities. The stretch on the railway between Amsterdam and here didn't feel too urban, though. Maybe it really did pass through the open empty spaces in the centre of the Rand ...

Concertgebouw

And, then, after 9 hours on a bike, there was Aldo Ciccolini's recital at the Concertgebouw.

The Grote Zaal was an approximately square-shaped room not much bigger than Victoria Concert Hall, but they crammed it full of seats: seats along the walls at sides of the aisles, seats---permanent ones, too---on the stage behind the peformer. The pianist was surrounded by members of the audiences on all sides. The seating capacity resulting from squeezing the available space to such an extent couldn't have been far shy of that of the Esplanade's concert hall. Maybe it was to be expected, given that the place was built and founded by a group of businessmen.
Surrounding the hall was a veritable complex of cloakrooms, corridors and terraces. The audience crowded into the terraces before the concert and during intermission for drinks; it was as crowded there as the MRT during rush hour ... and it was quite an audience too. Almost full house, save for the right side of the stalls.
The decor was very 19th century ... and along the entablature of the columns inside were inscribed the names of various famous composers contemporary at the time of the hall's construction. There was Dvořák, and Schubert, and Beethoven, and many others, including some whose names are rather less well-known today.
Notwithstanding the age of the hall, the acoustics were excellent. The piano sounded, from my seat five rows back, just as it would to the pianist ... although my seat was on the stage, and that might have meant better acoustics. It didn't hurt one bit either that Ciccolini was a masterful pianist, and was fully in control of his fingers at all times ... never did spot the slightest slip throughout the concert, even during the two encore pieces. And it wasn't just technical mastery either: I had not imagined Clementi could be played so vividly, and his playing gave Ravel's Valses lucid shape and meaning. De Falla's Spanish pieces were rendered in their full fiery livelieness. It was really very, very good.

Attentie, Fietsen

On a lark, the day was spent cycling around various bits of Greater Amsterdam. First south to Museumplein and the Oud Zuid, a few rounds around the Vondelpark, then south past Olympiaplein and Buitenveldert to Amstelveen; back through the rambling Amsterdamse Bos, past the quite striking Vrije Universitiet (the big red building down there), through de Pijp, past Sarphatipark, up and down part of the Amstel; following the Nieuwe Keizersgracht to the Plantage, where there was lunch; then further east to the Oosterpark, before heading back west through the islands, Waterlooplein and Centrum to Jordaan; and finally back to the bike rental shop on the Singel.

The scenery got somewhat progresively less interesting the further away from central Amsterdam it was ... although the Amsterdamse Bos was quite refreshing (a bit like Golden Gate Park, but even more like a forest near the heart of the city), and Buitenveldert and Amstelveen would surely have been nice places to live in, quiet and spacious though relatively close to the bustle of Amsterdam. Each neighbourhood did have its distinctive characteristics---neatly spaced-out terrace houses and wide canals near the Vondelpark; more closely-spaced rowhouses (though rather less claustrophobic than many East Asian cities) in de Pijp; more generous villas in the Plantage; narrow canals and similarly-proportioned houses on the eastern islands; the orderly stateliness of the Canal Belt and the more ragged version of it that was the Jordaan---though often not glaringly obvious ones. Reading Geert Mak's Amsterdam, and the half-slow pace of the city bicycle, fast enough not to be tedious but not so rapid as to make the passing scenery a blur, helped highlight and paint the differences in a suitable light.

Amsterdam really is a cyclist's dream: the bike paths go everywhere the roads go, plus many places the roads don't. Many roads are restricted to cars and other road traffic, but not to bicycles (and motorcycles). It was possible to cycle just about anywhere without ever getting off a bike path or bike lane. Sometimes motorcycles, which share the paths and lanes, are an annoyance, but there aren't many of them, and generally they don't present much of a danger. Plus the weather is ideally cool and breezy: you still sweat---it's quite unavoidable---but the sweat dries up very quickly.
There're plenty of bikes around, too. I have yet to see a traffic jam in Amsterdam, even at rush hour; but at any hour of the day, anywhere in the city, if you stop to take a look around, chances are you're spot someone cycling. And Centraal Station doesn't have a multi-storey carpark, but it does have a multi-storey bicycle park---and that's on top of the whole tranche of space given over to bicycle parking in front of the station. Have you seen almost three floors of bicycle racks full of parked bikes? It's quite an imposing sight.

Now that so many Chinese middle class denizens are eagerly abandoning their bicycle for cars, China should cede its title of "bicycle kingdom" to the Netherlands.