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.

It's Perfectly Comprehensible to me

According to this admittedly not-very-scientific mapping from Strange Maps (a really interesting site, by the way), the speakers a lot of languages express bewilderment at something by saying that it is Chinese to them, but the only analogous constructions in Chinese involve things like 天书 and 鬼符。
Is that indicative of superior understanding of other civilisations and their languages on the part of the Chinese? Or just a sign of pride and conceit---we believe no foreign language is beneath our understanding, even though we might not actually understand any? Or is it a result of China's past relative isolation from further parts of the world? Such isolation could have meant that while the few foreign tongues nearby were readily understood, the further ones, which might not have been comprehended so easily, were too distant and rarely encountered to find their way into such expressions of bewilderment.

What Border?

We thought it was a volleyball net ...

"Walleyball" didn't just present a valid point of view, it illustrated it vividly. The scene wasn't of two beaches in two countries with nothing to do with each other; it was of one continuous stretch of beach, with little to set apart the "American" and "Mexican" sides except that huge wooden thing. Why can't someone on one side of the US-Mexico border just walk over to the other side, to say hi to someone else who happens to be there? Except for that huge wooden thing, of course---that, and the whole idea of the closed, controlled border it represents. The narrator said it best: "It doesn't need a wall ... it doesn't need anything. It just needs a little bit of humanity."

A certain T. L. Wiuslow expressed it more radically when he advocated dissolving the border altogether, in something midway between Merger and annexation, in "The Megamerge Dissolution Solution" (warning: long, rambling article). Ignoring a few bits of residual national supremacism, he actually makes a lot of sense; to think about it, it is only a logical conclusion of the Walleyball line of thinking. Given the blockheadedness and prejudice which prevail at present, however, reason and common sense might take a long time to prevail here.

War / Dance

Watched War / Dance with the parents last Monday, at Sinema@Old School.
The cinema was quite interesting. It was small: one theatre, with red couches for seats (three to a couch), seating up to perhaps ninety people. From the posters on display in the box office-cum-gift shop downstairs we gathered it showed mainly local films, and some foreign independent films. And it had been set up in an interesting locale: the Old School compound (formerly the Methodist Girls' School campus, now converted to "digs for new school thinkers") was full of artist's studios, with plenty of semi-colonial architecture and inviting open space in between. An artist's colony of sorts---a rare creature in this nation of merchants, though it did seem quite in its natural habitat on quaint, quirky Mount Sophia.

The film was even better. The visuals were striking, and the story was deeply gripping---especially since it was a real, not fictionalised, account.

There were two scenes that struck me in particular.
The first was of a convoy of UN container trucks rolling into the refugee camp---now town---of Patongo. 'Every month, the school closes for one day when the UN delivers food to Patongo,' a caption explained. It wasn't just the school, but the whole town which seemed to stop for the supplies. Huge crowds---seemingly the whole population of the camp---gathered in impatient, pushy lines to demand, collect and jealously guard their share. The camera cut to show a child picking up from the ground grains of cassava which had dropped out of a sack. Why, in today's rich, industrialised, modernised world of plenty, should whole villages and districts be reduced to this kind of rationing? Not that the people seemed malnourished, but compared to the commercial plenty in so many other parts of the world, even in the Ugandan capital, it seems such a primitive and disruptive method of distribution.
The second was of the children of Patongo performing their traditional dance in the finals of the National Competition. 'When I dance I feel good,' a voice-over from one of the performers pipes in, 'I am more than a child of war ... I am strong. I am Acholi.' It reflects how it is not, perhaps, the music and dance itself, but rather the bonding with others---with a larger, deeper culture and heritage created and shared by others---through the music which is more therapeutic and healing. The intricate structure and euphonious sounds may soothe and provide distraction, but in this case the social connotations, not denotations, of music probably matter more.
And a lingering mystery ... the Lord's Resistance Army, whose somewhat random but horrific acts of violence form the backdrop of the documentary. They appear to be an Acholi rebel group which originated in a general insurgency against a presidential coup by another tribe but ended up attacking their own tribe when support for their cause wavered. Their present motivations may be unclear, but the nature of their atrocities is unambigiously outrageous. They are now surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned, by the Ugandan military, yet their leader refuses to negotiate, and has allegedly killed a deputy who tried to do just that. They may as well be an organised bunch of crazed lunatics, haunting the northern Ugandan bush at random.

Someone Else Willing

Apparently it's not only Muslims and Arabs who are free to invoke insy'Allah. Christians may (but increasingly do not) avail themselves of the Latin deo volonte, or the abbreviated d. v. if convenience demands.

National Day of Service and Remembrance

It may be slightly unwieldy a name, but wouldn't it be better for everyone if September 11 were remembered in this spirit, instead of the distinctly parochial, closed, mailed-fisted spirit lurking just behind "Patriot Day"? If Americans would forget their wrath which has brought so much more disquiet and suffering to the world, and recall instead the noble deeds that allowed them to prevail, and then remember, in humility, that they are scarcely alone in their suffering?

If at first you don't succeed ...

Try and try and try again.

A Democratic Spirit

The belief that truth is manifest is the basis of all tyranny - Sir Karl Popper (?)

'The truth can only be found by a critical process, by a creative process, by a process that is open, and our only criterion for whether one idea is better than another is whether we prefer it.'
Or, actually, if we take this view, there is hardly any room for an objective conception of truth anymore, won't you think? When the only criterion for judgement is subjective, when anything and anyone's contributions can be equally valid.
But maybe that was the whole point: it is far better to resolve differences and conflicts at hand and work things out, than to get entangled in intractable tussles over a slippery notion of abstract truth. And besides, wouldn't any definite choice of criteria be somewhat an arbitrary imposition on an otherwise open critical and creative process?

En pantoufles

Freely, easily, in as relaxed a manner as would be suggested by someone ambling around lazily in slippers, like Singaporeans do almost everywhere. We must be one of the most relaxed nations on Earth, by the standards of this French idiom ...

Advienne que pourra!

Fais ce que dois ... not just a moral injunction, but a steely declaration of determination: come what may! A almost devil-may-care reckless perserverance in one's rightful duty ...

Lares and Penates

In Roman mythology, lares were minor deities who guarded homes, crossroads and cities. Penates were in charge of the pantry and the household. 差不多就像地方神和灶神。The Romans and their descendants must have loved these small gods dearly, for lares and penates now refers to one's treasured household possessions.