a fond adieu I'm sitting in Runway 94 (the hotel bar) as I write this. The bar is not actually open, as it's 8 in the morning, but the three televisions drone on anyway. The babble of three competing talking heads melds into an odd sort of white noise that is better than silence, for me.I have a few more days in the good old US of A, but quite frankly I'm ready to come home. And Singapore is my home, for the simple reason that the two most important people in the world are there, waiting for me. Whatever else, this trip has been worth it because it's allowed me to refocus my priorities, my reality. It's not that I ever forgot that my wife and son are the most important things; it's just that I'd allowed so much static to creep in that the signal was getting thready. To put it succinctly, I miss the hell out of my wife and kid.In other news: The titular (every time I write that word, my 8 year old self sniggers) adieu is in reference to this blog, not America.I started this blog with the intent to write honestly and own my words, and because I was curious about whether one could do so without resorting to a nom de blog. And I've written as honestly as I was able; any failings on that front were ones of ability rather than desire. As for owning my words - well, I meant every word when I wrote it. The fact is, I'm more mercurial than I would like. Writing under your own name, I've discovered, means that some people will try to use your words as a handle, and can be loathe to let them go.So. This blog has come to an end.I'll still be writing, both at another blog and, if things go well, in other venues. To my wired and wireless friends, I'd like to say thank you for all your words, and I'll let you know when the new blog is up. To the occasional reader, I'll be out there, and perhaps you'll stumble across me.And to those who have come to this blog hoping to profit frm the confusing welter of my thoughts- well, I'll be classy about it and wish you wisdom, and a life long enough to attain it.Perfunctory hugs,MM waiting for my soul to catch up currently at the metropolitan hotel, nestled up against the Detroit airport, waiting for my soul to catch up to me. Or suffering from jetlag, take your pick. the continental breakfast starts in half an hour. managed a broken sleep with the television on cartoon network's [adult swim] all night. my culture is damned. but amusing.capital letters are for losers. angry now To all those who have called my wife offering their condolences over my 'departure', I'd just like to say: 1) I'm going to the US for two weeks, and then I'm coming back; 2) My wife and I are not breaking up; 3) rumor-mongering is an especially ugly blood-sport.Honestly, people. Grow up. dammit had a dirty bastard of a headache this morning, and took so many panadol my headache moved to my stomach. Racism is always personal I dislike discussing racism in Singapore, because most people think I'm imagining it, or I'm blowing it out of proportion, or simply don't want to acknowledge it, and frankly I'm tired of being made to feel as though I'm loopy for even bringing it up. It's made worse, I believe, because of all the baggage of Singapore's colonial past. How can (or is it how dare?) a white male cry racism?First, let's start with what virtually all Singaporeans really call white people: Ang moh. By most accounts, this translates to 'red head', or possibly 'red headed monkey', or according to one taxi driver, 'tomato'.The language of racism is slippery, and when we grow up with it, we become inured to it. Let's assume that ang moh simply means 'red head'. Not so bad, right? We're just picking out a physical detail that applies to some Caucasians, but no Asians. We use it to denote Caucasians in general. you know, a kind of short hand.So, by that light, it would be perfectly fine for me to describe all Asians as 'slant-eye'. Right? You know, a kind of short hand.Look, I grew up with racism. Latinos were 'wet-backs' or 'spicks'. Blacks were 'niggers'. Middle-easterners, 'ragheads'. Orientals were all 'Chinese' except for the Japanese, who were Japs and were buying up a lot of America at the time. The point is, I know racism's stamp and scent, because I lived in a neighborhood where political correctness was considered a joke. And when I was old enough to recognize racism when I saw (or heard) it, I was also old enough to know that it was wrong, and to reject it.It took me much longer to realize that some people cling to their racist beliefs in an illogical attempt to bolster their own sense of self-worth. If they could not raise themselves up, they would cut everyone else down, and foster a misguided sense of belonging to boot.It's the same in Singapore as it was on the Southside of San Antonio.Take for example one of my wife's ex-boyfriends, who urged her not to marry me because our children would be 'tsap sing'; half-breed bastards. Then tell me that I'm imagining racism directed towards Caucasians.Take for example the elderly Chinese man in Chinatown who told me matter-of-factly that 'Westerners have no culture.' Not that my culture is younger than or inferior to or less refined than 'Eastern culture', but nonexistent. Essentially, he was calling me an animal, from a long line of animals. Two things amused me about this. The first is that he delivered this bit of wisdom in a perfect, dare I say cultured accent without a hint of Singlish to it, and secondly my culture, the one that was nonexistent, taught me to respect my elders and kept me from lighting into him.Take for example the Sultan of Johor, who stated unequivocally that all Westerners are vultures.Three examples are enough. Examples of racism are like cockroaches. For everyone exposed to the light, there are a hundred others you can't see. Suffice to say I don't want to hear about it not existing towards 'ang moh'.Of course, if you want to talk about the degree of racism in Singapore in regards to different races, Caucasians do get off rather lightly. I won't speak for others, but I feel ashamed just hearing about 'Baiyee What Color' (what a hilarious game that is).The point of all this isn't to preach. People will believe whatever they want to. I'm not naive enough to think one blog post will change any one's mind, or make them examine the dark places in their own souls. I'm far more concerned about my own, and about the treatment my 'tsap sing' son is likely to face as he grows older.Nor do I think that all Singaporeans are racist, just as I do not think all Singaporeans are materialist. There are very, very good people in Singapore that I feel privileged to have met. But the fact remains that racism, like materialism, seems ground into the very fabric of this society.Maybe that's true about all societies. Maybe I'm being naive in expecting people not to be racist. On the other hand, maybe I'm being a realist when I tell my wife I want my son to grow up in the US. Now this is likely not true about all of the US, but in Texas, when I was growing up, pretty much the worst thing I heard said about Asians (excluding the Japanese) was that they were horrible drivers (which I have to say might have some basis in fact).Which society would it be better to bring my son up in? The one that might consider him a half-breed bastard, or the one that expects him to be good at math, but looks askance at giving him a driver's license?I know I'm not Asian, but I think the math on this pretty plain. "Are you allright?"I look up from The Geography of Nowhere. I've been lying on the uncomfortable blue leather loveseat with the chrome arms that her mother picked out. The one that I hate. "Why?""You seem very serious."I search for a new way to say what I have said so many times before. My mind is like a sparrowhawk, spiralling above a played-out quarry. Nothing. A widening gyre above barren rock. Stagnant water reflecting blue sky. No prey."It's the same thing, sweetie."She hands me fish oil capsules, for the omega 3. The ones her auntie's friend says are good for those getting off of antidepressants."I'm not depressed," I tell her. "I'm unhappy."I put the pill bottle down on the end table. I know what I said. I've known for a long time now that I am unhappy, and have got hold of tag ends of reasons why. There are a lot of reasons, more than I want to go into here and now, but what has become more clear as time goes on is that I'm not living my life in a way consistent with my beliefs.It took me a long time to get a handle on what my beliefs are. As time goes on, I get older, the world goes more pear-shaped, and my son continues to grow. And I start to realize that yes, some things are important to me. And some things aren't.An ocean view from the 26th floor is not important to me. Having a place to dig in the dirt is. A new car is not important to me. Not having to drive unless I want to, especially in Singapore traffic, is. Endless summer is not important to me. Seasons are. The list goes on, most of it just items of personal import, like the availability of fresh tortillas (the ones available in Singapore taste like paste).But there are other things that are very important to me, like teaching my son values that are either implicitly or explicitly contradicted in this society. The idea that he must be the best, that he should not bother to experiment if there is a possibility of failure, the fear of making mistakes, the maniacal emphasis on material wealth... Singapore as a society is deeply flawed. It is unhealthy. It creates a nation of egoists that cannot imagine what others might feel or think, or why it might be important to even ask such questions.It is an engineered society where the only real sense of community comes in the form of distaste for foreigners. Singapore is a vast competition, to see who can accumulate the most material wealth before shuffling off the old mortal coil.In it, in Singapore, I feel... lessened. Continually, my thoughts and beliefs are at odds with not only the government, but the man and woman on the street, even my own wife. It builds to the point where I begin to doubt myself. It erodes my self-esteem.Singapore makes me deeply unhapy. Life is too short to be in a place that makes you this unhappy. Taking a break I'll be on blogging vacation for a while. Check back around September 1st or so. Until then, be good.Hugs,mm My America (Failure Edition) I don't have the heart to post it twice, so here's the link. A Generational Challenge to Repower America Here follows Al Gore's speech in its entireity. It's long. Suck it up. This is important.This speech was given today at the D.A.R. Constitutional HallLadies and gentlemen:There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more -- if more should be required -- the future of human civilization is at stake.I don't remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse -- much more quickly than predicted. Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months. This will further increase the melting pressure on Greenland. According to experts, the Jakobshavn glacier, one of Greenland's largest, is moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day, equivalent to the amount of water used every year by the residents of New York City.Two major studies from military intelligence experts have warned our leaders about the dangerous national security implications of the climate crisis, including the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees destabilizing nations around the world.Just two days ago, 27 senior statesmen and retired military leaders warned of the national security threat from an "energy tsunami" that would be triggered by a loss of our access to foreign oil. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues, and now the war in Afghanistan appears to be getting worse.And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn't it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours and record floods. Unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American West. Higher temperatures lead to drier vegetation that makes kindling for mega-fires of the kind that have been raging in Canada, Greece, Russia, China, South America, Australia and Africa. Scientists in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University tell us that for every one degree increase in temperature, lightning strikes will go up another 10 percent. And it is lightning, after all, that is principally responsible for igniting the conflagration in California today.Like a lot of people, it seems to me that all these problems are bigger than any of the solutions that have thus far been proposed for them, and that's been worrying me.I'm convinced that one reason we've seemed paralyzed in the face of these crises is our tendency to offer old solutions to each crisis separately -- without taking the others into account. And these outdated proposals have not only been ineffective - they almost always make the other crises even worse.Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges -- the economic, environmental and national security crises.We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change.But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we're holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.In my search for genuinely effective answers to the climate crisis, I have held a series of "solutions summits" with engineers, scientists, and CEOs. In those discussions, one thing has become abundantly clear: when you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices. Moreover, they are also the very same solutions we need to guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf.What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home?We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world's energy needs for a full year.Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses.And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America.The quickest, cheapest and best way to start using all this renewable energy is in the production of electricity. In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses.But to make this exciting potential a reality, and truly solve our nation's problems, we need a new start.That's why I'm proposing today a strategic initiative designed to free us from the crises that are holding us down and to regain control of our own destiny. It's not the only thing we need to do. But this strategic challenge is the lynchpin of a bold new strategy needed to re-power America.Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans -- in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.A few years ago, it would not have been possible to issue such a challenge. But here's what's changed: the sharp cost reductions now beginning to take place in solar, wind, and geothermal power - coupled with the recent dramatic price increases for oil and coal -- have radically changed the economics of energy.When I first went to Congress 32 years ago, I listened to experts testify that if oil ever got to $35 a barrel, then renewable sources of energy would become competitive. Well, today, the price of oil is over $135 per barrel. And sure enough, billions of dollars of new investment are flowing into the development of concentrated solar thermal, photovoltaics, windmills, geothermal plants, and a variety of ingenious new ways to improve our efficiency and conserve presently wasted energy.And as the demand for renewable energy grows, the costs will continue to fall. Let me give you one revealing example: the price of the specialized silicon used to make solar cells was recently as high as $300 per kilogram. But the newest contracts have prices as low as $50 a kilogram.You know, the same thing happened with computer chips -- also made out of silicon. The price paid for the same performance came down by 50 percent every 18 months -- year after year, and that's what's happened for 40 years in a row.To those who argue that we do not yet have the technology to accomplish these results with renewable energy: I ask them to come with me to meet the entrepreneurs who will drive this revolution. I've seen what they are doing and I have no doubt that we can meet this challenge.To those who say the costs are still too high: I ask them to consider whether the costs of oil and coal will ever stop increasing if we keep relying on quickly depleting energy sources to feed a rapidly growing demand all around the world. When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cells increases, the price often comes down.When we send money to foreign countries to buy nearly 70 percent of the oil we use every day, they build new skyscrapers and we lose jobs. When we spend that money building solar arrays and windmills, we build competitive industries and gain jobs here at home.Of course there are those who will tell us this can't be done. Some of the voices we hear are the defenders of the status quo -- the ones with a vested interest in perpetuating the current system, no matter how high a price the rest of us will have to pay. But even those who reap the profits of the carbon age have to recognize the inevitability of its demise. As one OPEC oil minister observed, "The Stone Age didn't end because of a shortage of stones."To those who say 10 years is not enough time, I respectfully ask them to consider what the world's scientists are telling us about the risks we face if we don't act in 10 years. The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis. When the use of oil and coal goes up, pollution goes up. When the use of solar, wind and geothermal increases, pollution comes down.To those who say the challenge is not politically viable: I suggest they go before the American people and try to defend the status quo. Then bear witness to the people's appetite for change.I for one do not believe our country can withstand 10 more years of the status quo. Our families cannot stand 10 more years of gas price increases. Our workers cannot stand 10 more years of job losses and outsourcing of factories. Our economy cannot stand 10 more years of sending $2 billion every 24 hours to foreign countries for oil. And our soldiers and their families cannot take another 10 years of repeated troop deployments to dangerous regions that just happen to have large oil supplies.What could we do instead for the next 10 years? What should we do during the next 10 years? Some of our greatest accomplishments as a nation have resulted from commitments to reach a goal that fell well beyond the next election: the Marshall Plan, Social Security, the interstate highway system. But a political promise to do something 40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows that it's meaningless. Ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target.When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon.To be sure, reaching the goal of 100 percent renewable and truly clean electricity within 10 years will require us to overcome many obstacles. At present, for example, we do not have a unified national grid that is sufficiently advanced to link the areas where the sun shines and the wind blows to the cities in the East and the West that need the electricity. Our national electric grid is critical infrastructure, as vital to the health and security of our economy as our highways and telecommunication networks. Today, our grids are antiquated, fragile, and vulnerable to cascading failure. Power outages and defects in the current grid system cost US businesses more than $120 billion dollars a year. It has to be upgraded anyway.We could further increase the value and efficiency of a Unified National Grid by helping our struggling auto giants switch to the manufacture of plug-in electric cars. An electric vehicle fleet would sharply reduce the cost of driving a car, reduce pollution, and increase the flexibility of our electricity grid.At the same time, of course, we need to greatly improve our commitment to efficiency and conservation. That's the best investment we can make.America's transition to renewable energy sources must also include adequate provisions to assist those Americans who would unfairly face hardship. For example, we must recognize those who have toiled in dangerous conditions to bring us our present energy supply. We should guarantee good jobs in the fresh air and sunshine for any coal miner displaced by impacts on the coal industry. Every single one of them.Of course, we could and should speed up this transition by insisting that the price of carbon-based energy include the costs of the environmental damage it causes. I have long supported a sharp reduction in payroll taxes with the difference made up in CO2 taxes. We should tax what we burn, not what we earn. This is the single most important policy change we can make.In order to foster international cooperation, it is also essential that the United States rejoin the global community and lead efforts to secure an international treaty at Copenhagen in December of next year that includes a cap on CO2 emissions and a global partnership that recognizes the necessity of addressing the threats of extreme poverty and disease as part of the world's agenda for solving the climate crisis.Of course the greatest obstacle to meeting the challenge of 100 percent renewable electricity in 10 years may be the deep dysfunction of our politics and our self-governing system as it exists today. In recent years, our politics has tended toward incremental proposals made up of small policies designed to avoid offending special interests, alternating with occasional baby steps in the right direction. Our democracy has become sclerotic at a time when these crises require boldness.It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now.Am I the only one who finds it strange that our government so often adopts a so-called solution that has absolutely nothing to do with the problem it is supposed to address? When people rightly complain about higher gasoline prices, we propose to give more money to the oil companies and pretend that they're going to bring gasoline prices down. It will do nothing of the sort, and everyone knows it. If we keep going back to the same policies that have never ever worked in the past and have served only to produce the highest gasoline prices in history alongside the greatest oil company profits in history, nobody should be surprised if we get the same result over and over again. But the Congress may be poised to move in that direction anyway because some of them are being stampeded by lobbyists for special interests that know how to make the system work for them instead of the American people.If you want to know the truth about gasoline prices, here it is: the exploding demand for oil, especially in places like China, is overwhelming the rate of new discoveries by so much that oil prices are almost certain to continue upward over time no matter what the oil companies promise. And politicians cannot bring gasoline prices down in the short term.However, there actually is one extremely effective way to bring the costs of driving a car way down within a few short years. The way to bring gas prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 per gallon gasoline.Many Americans have begun to wonder whether or not we've simply lost our appetite for bold policy solutions. And folks who claim to know how our system works these days have told us we might as well forget about our political system doing anything bold, especially if it is contrary to the wishes of special interests. And I've got to admit, that sure seems to be the way things have been going. But I've begun to hear different voices in this country from people who are not only tired of baby steps and special interest politics, but are hungry for a new, different and bold approach.We are on the eve of a presidential election. We are in the midst of an international climate treaty process that will conclude its work before the end of the first year of the new president's term. It is a great error to say that the United States must wait for others to join us in this matter. In fact, we must move first, because that is the key to getting others to follow; and because moving first is in our own national interest.So I ask you to join with me to call on every candidate, at every level, to accept this challenge -- for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years. It's time for us to move beyond empty rhetoric. We need to act now.This is a generational moment. A moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I'm asking you - each of you - to join me and build this future. Please join the WE campaign at wecansolveit.org. We need you. And we need you now. We're committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws. And laws will only change with leadership.On July 16, 1969, the United States of America was finally ready to meet President Kennedy's challenge of landing Americans on the moon. I will never forget standing beside my father a few miles from the launch site, waiting for the giant Saturn 5 rocket to lift Apollo 11 into the sky. I was a young man, 21 years old, who had graduated from college a month before and was enlisting in the United States Army three weeks later.I will never forget the inspiration of those minutes. The power and the vibration of the giant rocket's engines shook my entire body. As I watched the rocket rise, slowly at first and then with great speed, the sound was deafening. We craned our necks to follow its path until we were looking straight up into the air. And then four days later, I watched along with hundreds of millions of others around the world as Neil Armstrong took one small step to the surface of the moon and changed the history of the human race.We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind. My America (Oh, Shit Edition) So IndyMac was taken over by the FDIC on Friday, and is now IndyMac Federal Bank. But don't worry, says the new CEO John Bovenzi (also the current COO of FDIC). Your deposits up to $100,000 are insired.IndyMac had roughly $19 billion in assets. The FDIC has a $53 billion war chest. But they have 90 other banks on their problem banks list. $53 billion is nothing."I think the important point to make is that, historically, only a very small percentage of the banks on our problem banks list ever failed," Bovenzi said on CNN late Sunday.But this isn't history. This is uncharted territory. Fannie and Freddie are on the brink of being bailed out because we simply cannot afford to see them go belly-up. IndyMac is the 5th bank this year to implode, the 5th bank this year that had to be taken over by the FDIC. Before IndyMac was First Integrity Bank, ANB Financial, Hume Bank, and Douglass National Bank.While none of these institutions topped $2 billion in deposits, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see that the FDIC, just like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is woefully underfunded.Beyond $53 billion, Bovenzi said the FDIC would have to go to other banks to raise more money.Get that? The FDIC, which insures our bank deposits, will likely have to borrow from banks to insure our bank deposits. With that sort of ouroboros economics, I'm surprised the bubble lasted as long as it did. My America (Wolfe was wrong edition) No link thingie this time, just an announcement that I'll be in The America (as Smoot calls it) August 10th-24th. San Antonio and Detroit. So if you wanna grab a drink or toilet paper a house or something, I'm up for it. Oops, Gar did it again. Gar the Pitiless has posted another edifying instalment of the Evil Overlord Handbook. Something to do with selling his mother and sharpened stakes. My America (weekly) Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.(Ludwig Borne) Acknowledgement ...I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing.Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots.-Eliot, PreludesBrought to mind reading my friend's blog. The Secret It's okay to have a few screws loose. The secret is to muffle the rattling. Coffee Bean Yellow Box Turf War Nestled at the base of Suntec Tower Four, just next to the glass door that lead into the lift lobby, is the four-table smoking section of the Coffee Bean. It's where I feel most comfortable writing.This is unfortunate. Unfortunate because it's a very popular spot. All the smokers from the 30-odd floors of office building circle it like flies. Like flies, they never actually buy anything from the Coffee Bean. Many actually bring food and beverages from competitors. The tables are always littered with cups from San Francisco Coffee, soda cans, and the ubiquitous, anonymous white Styrofoam coffee cups with accompanying pink plastic jockstrap carrier.There is a veritable rogue's gallery of smoking squatters that I see there time and time again, but the worst offender is a big burly guy with what I assume is an Eastern European accent, a prison haircut, and a penchant for striped polo shirts. I call him Vlad.In the two plus years I have been patronizing this Coffee Bean, I have never, not once, seen him with a Coffee Bean beverage or tasty snack. Worse, Vlad has a posse. They all generally end up sitting around one of the four tables, after stripping the other tables, locust-like, of their chairs.Now I'm generally a live-and-let-live kinda guy, and for a long time I just shrugged such boorish behavior off. I figured if the Coffee Bean employees couldn't be arsed to do anything about the situation, it wasn't my place. Until the day Vlad stole my ashtray.You see, this particular Coffee Bean's employees (nice folks, actually) have essentially given up the entire smoking section as a lost cause. Which means unless you specifically ask for an ashtray, they don't bother bringing them out of the back room and putting them on the tables.(Exhibit A)On the infamous day in question, I'd done just that. I was doing my thing, had gotten in a writing groove, and finished my regular ice blended mocha with no whipped cream (m-reg-no-whip). I went back inside to get a Raspberry Esprit (10% real juice!), came back outside, and lo and behold, my ashtray was now being used by The Posse.Now, my notebook, pen, cigarettes and messenger bag were still on the table, but the lone ashtray in the smoking section, the one I had specifically asked for and received and was quite obviously still using, had magically migrated to the group of squatters. Vlad and the rest of the Posse studiously looked anywhere but at me as the conversation died.I went back inside, asked for another butt-holder, went back to my table and put it down very loudly. I tried to write, but the mood was broken. This is tragedy. I could have been on the way to writing the great American/Singaporean novel. Or a decent blog post. But we'll never know now, will we?Since that day, I've made sure to give Vlad and his gang of thieves very hard looks. I scrape my chair, loudly. Sometimes I blow my smoke directly at them, while seemingly absorbed in writing or reading. And I will continue to do so. There can be no accommodation with these sorts of people.I think Vlad and his posse get the message. Evil Overlord update Gar the Pitiless informs me that he has overcome a small palace revolution and has posted another installment of the Evil Overlord Handbook. That is all. Siglap signage Is the good time, indeed.How to create repeat customers. My America (weekly edition) We stand against a wind, and our words are torn from our mouths. We keep up with the Kardashians, and learn what it is to live Lohan. We do it bigger, brighter and more vibrantly, and we mount it on the wall, where in a simpler time we might have hung mementos of achievements.We bend with the remover to remove.We know what Tyler Durden would do. We Kos, daily. We check our directory of wonderful things. We can haz cheezeburger, if we want to. We fail. We reach out across the void, and our reach exceeds our grasp.We lie in the gutter, and look at stars. Loops and spirals and ping pong balls acceleratewithout a destination to welcome methis roadis just an endless loop-Assemblage 23, AwakePerhaps not the deepest insight, but then I prefer useful to deep.Went (reluctantly) to a party last night full of all sorts of people I generally try to avoid. Met the Spanish ambassador. Met (for the second time) a local writer/historian. Met a rather nice woman who a) only wears vintage clothing, b) spent years in various jungles studying witch doctors and the like, c) is an atheist, d) is also a priestess of some jungle religion or other and thus is licensed to sacrifice water buffalo. There were all sorts of other people there as well, ranging from amusing to much less entertaining/interesting/worth the non-refundable minutes of my life spent listening to their self-absorbed chatter.The most congenial conversation I had all night was with a podiatrist from Brisbane. And in the end I realized yet again that I'd rather be pedestrian than pompous or pedantic.I remember back in high school I was once roped into going to a leadership workshop (God knows why; I was the star underachiever of 1889). The speaker did this thing: She put an empty coke bottle on the table on the stage, then rested a ping pong ball on the mouth of the bottle. The she lined ten of us up on the side of the stage and instructed us to hold our right arms out straight and walk towards the bottle staring straight ahead. The goal was to flick the ball off the bottle.Nine other kids were ahead of me. Each went forward, flicked, failed. When my turn came I walked forward flicked, and sent the ball bouncing stage right.The speaker laughed and said the lesson to take away from the exercise was that if you lose sight of your goals you will fail nine times out of ten. What I learned from the exercise was that if you aim lower than everybody else, you stand a much better chance of hitting your target, which really just validated my entire un-stellar academic career to that point.I guess the point of all this is that perspective is a tricky thing. For a long time now I've been looking at my life in a top-down sort of way, and like Tom Shear, I've seen only an endless loop. Which sort of rips the guts out of you, to be frank. I forgot the private lesson I learned on that public stage: That lowering my aim and sights a little works best for me, because when I do, an amazing thing happens. The flat featureless loop of my life is revealed to be something much more complex and interesting -- a spiral, climbing ever upward.Let others sit atop their lofty towers and look down on the rest of the world. The truth is, I prefer the view from the street. More things that make me happy: Assemblage 23 One of the things I miss terribly about the US is the musical culture -- or rather the musical subculture that I was at least moderately deeply into before I came to Singapore and was confronted by the tasteless horror that is the Singaporean CD shop. Wedged firmly between gothic and industrial music is a variant generally known as 'electro', and the truly wonderful acts that make up a large percentage of the genre meld the better aspects of the genres to either side. Melodic, edgy, with intelligent lyrics that often (to me at least) cross the border into poetry, most of these acts are on the Metropolis label, and the main distibutor of Metropolis bands, industrial-music.com, does not ship to Singapore. Not that I'm bitter. Recently I opened an ebay account, though, and have received my first Electro goodness: Assemblage 23's Failure CD. The work of one guy, Tom Shear, Failure is not his best all around album, but it has one of the most haunting and beautiful modern songs I've ever listened to. Disappoint was written about and for Shear's father, who committed suicide in 1999. Another must-listen-to song on the album is Divide, which actually grates on the nerves until you reach the payoff chorus, when the melodic and muted poetic rage is a release, a moment of catharsis. To find out more about the music and the man, visit the Assemblage 23 website. This music brings me back to a sense of self, and at the same time allows me to go beyond and briefly forget the meat and bone me and connect with something larger, with the realm of emotion and idea. Your mileage, of course, may vary.For those interested, you can also check out Wolfsheim and VNV Nation for an elecro trifecta. And really, if you can, listen to this stuff on a hi-fi system that can give you the richness and intricacy of the sound. Stumbling towards the truth Before the breakdown in 2003, I was, deservedly or not, a fairly self-confident person. I had accomplished a few things that were, to me, very important. I had also endured a lot in my life, and to an extent what hadn't killed me really had made me stronger. The bedrock of my self-certainty was a proven ability to endure and to outlast the problems in my life, which is a very real form of strength.How ironic that my weakness was born of, or at least massively advanced by an excess of that strength. As I at first slid, then went into free-fall down the gaping maw of depression, I refused to seek help or even acknowledge that there was a worsening problem. I had endured and outlasted so much, it seemed for a long time that this depression was one more obstacle to overcome. Eventually this refusal to admit and deal with what was happening to me cost me everything - my fiancee and her daughter, my job, my car, my apartment, my credit rating, my ability to write fiction, and most debilitating of all, my self-confidence. My sense of dignity and self-worth.Five years have passed. Much in my life has changed. I have a wife now, and a son. I live on the other side of the world. I have much to be thankful for. But the comfortable life I live here is mostly due to the efforts of my (smart, beautiful, hard-working) wife, and the life I left in tatters back in the US is still there, still in tatters. And still on my mind.My poor wife. For nearly five years she has had to stand on the shore, watching me struggle to keep afloat, washed closer and then pulled farther away by the tides of my changing emotional condition. I hope, at least, that she knows that I do struggle, I do fight to make it back up on dry land.I know that I will likely never be the fully centered, completely emotionally healthy person I want to be, but then who is? But I can be healthier and better-adjusted tomorrow than I am today, and better today than I was yesterday.I generally don't mind the struggle. What is frustrating is how long it takes me to come to the simplest realizations. Like the fact that I only realized in the last few days how much my low-self confidence and self-esteem was affecting my happiness and the happiness of those I care for. Once I finally stumbled across this truth, it was simple enough to apply a little logic. In order to gain self-esteem and self-confidence, I need to do several things, like create some achievements in my life, execute responsibilities well, and wherever possible, correct past mistakes that cling to my psyche and drag me down. I can't change the past, but I can fix some of the things I broke, and rehabilitate some things I abandoned to decay.I know what I need to do. And I know that, until I get started doing them, I will always smell a sour whiff of failure clinging to my psyche... and so will others. And that is unacceptable. Decision I have decided to quit writing fiction.As I haven't actually finished anything, save one really terrible story, in about five years, this would seem not to be a difficult choice. The thing is, however, for all those five years I've been trying, sweating blood, berating myself endlessly for not living up to my own expectations. For. Five. Years.Enough.And the funny thing is, it's as gut-wrenching as it is liberating, to give up on that long-held dream. I feel sick and giddy at the same time. sorry sorry sorry That last post may have been a tad grumpy. Truth is, I'm not especially happy right now. Maybe you could tell.Stress with the business, stress with the quitting smoking.I am mostly not happy with myself. I feel leaden. Turgid. Mentally, I wonder where my acuity has gone. Emotionally, I am (to quote the Red Hot Chilli Peppers) feeling sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.Maybe I just need a good night's sleep. rant Singapore is a graceless place without much in the way of courtesy. It's a me-first, fuck you kind of a place where the vast majority of people actually believe that being first and having more make you a better person (and when I say 'better person' I mean better than others around you, not better as in more noble, more caring, more honest...).There are a thousand daily slights that chip away at my deeply ingrained sense of courtesy and propriety and drive me insane. I find myself having to drive quite a bit now, and every minute on the road just grinds away at any sense of caring or compassion for my fellow humans, because they are, by and large, selfish, arrogant fucks who think nothing of putting other motorists in danger if it gets them to their destination a fraction of a second sooner.Outside the car, it's just as bad, if not as potentially lethal. Go to the bank, take a number to see the teller. Then count the number of fuckers who ignore the queue and the numbers and just walk up to the teller because their business is more important than yours. Maybe it's just my bank. Maybe it's just me. It happened to me at the grocery store tonight as well. It happens to me at restaurants.Maybe it's because I'm white. There, I said it.When I first got here, I loved Singapore. I endured the dirty looks of the aunties and uncles when my wife and I walked down the street hand in hand. I was in love, and had enough love forgive the faults and failings in my fellow man.I no longer love Singapore. I'm still in love with my wife, but having a kid, and having a wife who works 12 to 16 hour days tends to kill the walking down Orchard road hand in hand thing. And there are only so many times you can go to Orchard Road before you just want to burn the place down, really. Just as there are only so many times you can be stared at with disapproval by strangers infected with that debilitating disease, racism, before your pity for their narrow mindedness sublimates to nothing, and is replaced by a hard sort of smoldering anger.An anger, I might add, matched only by what I feel for my wife's Blackberry.I think I need a vacation. Somewhere that boasts no building taller than three storeys. Somewhere with seasons. Somewhere I don't have to pay surcharges for the misery of driving with thousands of people whose courtesy and common sense have been overloaded by their assholes. Somewhere Blackberries fear to tread./rant tagged, and stuff. Tagged by Mei.WHAT ARE YOU READING?The rules:1. Pick up the nearest book.Not the book I am currently reading, but Vagabond, By Bernard Cornwell.2. Open to page 123.("Sir William sighed." says the first three words.)3. Find the fifth sentence.(A dozen archers and as many English men-at-arms were using knives to cut Scottish throats.) My, my.4. Post the next three sentences.Not sure I should. Meh. "They would pause before finishing off an man-at-arms to discover whether he had any value as a source of ransom, but few men had such value and the clansmen had none. The latter, hated above all the Scots because they were so different, were treated as vermin. Sir William cautiously raised his head and decided this was the moment to retreat."I think I'd be retreating about then as well.5. Tag five peopleUm, let's see. Expat, VPS, Indie, Vanity Spared and uh, uh, uh, Val.In other news, I've quit smoking. Smoke free for five days so far. That'll be another post. I can say that it's hard, but not impossible with the new stop smoking pill (champix) that my mother in law bought me (and here I thought she wanted me dead).It's late. G'night, world. Sleep tight. What I want for Christmas The Nordhavn 56 Motorsailer. You can circumnavigate the globe on one tank of fuel. If you've got several hundred thousand dollars for the boat, that is. Of course, If you want to get me something practical, you could always get me the Toilet-Mate 56 istead: I hate Singapore toilets. You know I still love you It's just that there's so much work to be done right now. Things that make me happy: Tarsem Singh ...though he is not technically a thing.Because he makes movies with the most stunning visuals. This is the kind of thing I strive for when I'm writing fantasy, and generally fall woefully short of. And now "The Fall" is being re-released! Think "Pan's Labrynth" meets "The English Patient". But better. And weirder.