Caped Crusaders This is so cool. Guess who I saw the other day? The nice guy who wrote this letter to me. But I didn't say hi because he probably didn't know me, and even if he did, I don't want him to know that in spite of all the effort he took in writing that letter to me, I have just decided not to go ahead writing. Since there is nothing much to write about I will indulge in another bout of nostalgia. The other day, I was in a bookshop and I saw this famous Singaporean playwright. He was a buddy of my old form teacher who was a director in a theatre group of which he was the playwright. That reminded me of my favourite play (among those I wrote) – “Caped Crusaders”.This happened one day when I was half as old as I am right now. I was submitting an entry for a playwriting competition, and the winners would be staged as school plays. I thought that I was going to put an entry in, but for the longest time I couldn’t think about what to write. Suddenly, 2 weeks before the deadline, inspiration struck. I was a serial procrastinator, as you guys know. I only started writing the thing 2 days before hand and I had to plead for an extension of 1 day while I wrote the thing through the night even as I attended school during the day. After 2 hectic nights, I finished it. I knew what the punchline was going to be, and I wrote the easy parts (ie the climax of the story) first. The more difficult parts, which dealt with the set up and the character development, I just had to tikam it. Towards the end, it became more and more forced. I just had to will myself towards the finish line, like I did in my marathon 10+ years later.I dashed to school on a Saturday morning, and dumped it into the teacher’s mailbox. (Anyway, you might know that I’m typing this at the same desk which used to house that computer that I typed the play on. So some things don’t change very much.)I don’t think I will put the play online. Some people might recognize the title of the play and my identity will be outed. Unlikely but you never know. And there is no need to: there is precisely 1 aspect of the play that I was proud of, and that was the plot. And it was after writing this play that I told myself, fundamentally, the most important aspect will always be plot. If you have a good plot, everything will take care of itself. So here is the plot:A few boys live in a kampong. One day, a developer comes and tells them that he will tear down their kampong and build a condo over it. They decide to stage a fightback. They conduct a series of childish pranks on the developer, but at the same time, they have a friend who’s a journalist, and the newspaper coverage turns their fight against the developer into a cause celebre, and a media sensation. They become known as superheroes. A Tiananmen style face-off develops, and many people rally to their cause. The kampong leader starts to let fame and fortune go to his head. They stage a faux hunger strike, but allows the kids to nibble a few titbits here and there. All in the name of more media coverage. Impatient to get the project going, the developers send in their bulldozers. Worried that the developers will uncover their stash of canned food, some of the kampong kids throw themselves in front of the bulldozer, and get run over and killed by accident. It is a sad ending and the main leaders of the kampong fall out over the incident. It’s a good plot. In fact, I think that it’s one of the best stories I’ve ever told. I got the initial idea looking at a spiral staircase in my school. Then that spiral staircase became a treehouse, and it became a hangout place for a few kids. When I conceived this idea, it was very similar to the “Bridge to Terabithia”, which I watched a few years ago, and saw the similarity to what I was driving at in that play. Basically the first strand of the plot I had was: paradise lost.For me, it was about innocence lost. I was growing into an adult, but still very unwilling to let go of my childhood. I probably was quite resentful about not having a gang to hang out with when I was a kid and wrote this to compensate for it. Yes, it was one of those classic deprived childhood stories. But there are more dimensions to this dichotomy. It’s not only that adulthood encroaches and you’re willing against it, you’re yearning to fight back. It’s also a more innocent, rustic kampong existence that’s being lost to the more sophisticated, modern lifestyle represented by the condo development. The second strand of the plot was similar to Ziggy Stardust, an invention of David Bowie. Ziggy Stardust was a character, and he started a band. Became very popular, and a darling of the media. Until the fame got to his head, and he imploded, the media rounded on him and destroyed him. He got destroyed by his excesses. This was the ultimate hubris-nemesis thing in Greek plays.The third strand of the plot was the story of Tiananmen square, the heroism / martyrdom of the young people who were ultimately no match for the PLA. Obviously my first instinct is to be on the side of the students. This was a David vs Goliath struggle. The bulldozer running people down was – you know how this relates to Tiananmen, I don’t have to tell you. The fourth strand of the plot was Chee Soon Juan. He staged a hunger strike in the early 90s, in case anybody remembers. I was thinking to myself, what’s this for? I don’t understand. It was martyrdom. It was dying for nothing. I remember a chance remark by my grandmother: “maybe he’s hiding all the food somewhere and cheating”. We wouldn’t know. But we didn’t have a good impression of Chee Soon Juan.In the end, the killing of the kampong kids reflected my ambivalence about the whole thing. It was a bit like saying, “come on, who are we trying to kid? This is not a fairy tale, things that were going to happen were always going to happen.” And I didn’t want to seem overly critical of the government, and that’s why I made the kampong leader to be an anti-hero in the end.The killing of an innocent child in the end was also a feature of “Bridge to Terabithia”. Was it justified? As a form of moral justice, you could say that the kampong leader was punished because he overreached himself. But that was in spite of his heroism in leading the kampong resistance? As a form of poetic justice, you could say that the death of the child resonated with the death of the kampong. It compounded the tragedy and it was a clear message that the kampong could not be saved in any case. Going back to my equating the kampong with the innocence of childhood, having somebody die is something that irretrievably cuts you off from the past. And in a tragedy, if something is presented to you as being a thing of beauty, it will probably die soon. Some of the more perceptive viewers of the play would have seen it coming.So when I thought of the plot, I was excited, because basically some of my favourite stories were in there. Some of my favourite themes were in there. Best of all was the surprise ending: at the beginning, I set the audience expectations that this was going to be a comedy, a kind of a farce. Then I put in the part about them being a David vs Goliath struggle, and made them succeed, improbably, against the odds. Before I punched them in the stomach with the tragedy at the end. Yes, you have to manipulate your audience’s emotions a little. I may have been young, but I was already cynical enough to realise that. But in another way that play reflects my approach to life: make everything look like a comedy at first, before you reveal your true intentions. My play was selected to get performed as a school play. Victory was sweet for me, but I half expected to win. I thought, in any case I will attend this performance. Either my play will be performed I have to attend it, or there will be 3 plays that are better than that, in which case I definitely want to see what the fuss is all about.Victory was sweet because my parents were complaining about why I was spending all this time on an ECA when I could have studied for my exams. I’ll tell you: I knew very well that I would rather have had this play written than to get 1 more A1 for my exams. I was very clear about that. Another bone I had to pick was with my English teacher who was a real prickly character, and who told me that I was a “Maths genius”. I wanted to show her that I was a genius, period.One of the judges was one of the more prominent local playwrights, and he stayed on as a consultant for the drama production. (In fact what prompted this blog entry was that I saw him one day walking through a bookstore. Not that I would have said hi, he wouldn't have recognised me.) My cast and crew were, unfortunately, not happy with the play at all. They couldn’t see it from my point of view. I thought they sympathised more with the condo developers. But later on I felt that there was probably a more cynical reason: my play was a little anti-government. People were probably thinking that maybe their careers would be evaporating before their eyes. There was definitely a conflict with their values. I wrote to the consultant for help, and to my surprise he wrote me a long letter. Now that I think about it, I can guess why he wrote that letter. I had attended the Creative Arts Program, which was an outreach program run by the arts community, you had some people who were interested in various forms of art, and they would attend talks, and be in some environment which immersed them in the performing arts. At the end, some of them would be assigned a mentor, and they would hopefully get a leg up to develop their talents. Well I attended that program didn’t get assigned a mentor and maybe they realised their mistake the second time around. I was a little sore about that but truthfully the stuff I submitted to them for consideration was really not very up to scratch. That must have been the reason, rather than that the play was something special, as I had initially assumed.Writing that play was – let’s be a little corny – it was my defining moment. It typified a few things I wanted. 1. It was one of the rare occasions that I got something done through will and persistence. (But frankly, I wish that I had been a bit more persistent, because I never got around to polishing up that play to be much better than its original form.)2. I defied my parents and I won. Well I didn’t exactly become a top student for my “O” levels but I ended up getting into the school of my choice, which is really what counts. So in a way their fears that it would affect my studies proved unfounded. 3. It was a nice “up yours” to my English teacher. Well writing a play is like talking, and being able to analyse a play with essays is like listening. I probably am a better talker than a listener. 4. It started my playwriting career, and probably achieved one of my life goals. I was sneaky about it to keep it quiet until it was my time to step onto the big stage. (But I was too sneaky about it. By the time the play was staged – and it was staged by my juniors – my cohort had already left the school. Therefore not many people knew about my play.) I suppose a lot of it is a reflection of the person that I am. Football Betting Season 2 Week 13 On Saturday I didn’t see anything worth punting on. On Sunday I considered punting on 2 matches – Blackburn vs Man U, and Tottenham vs Portsmouth. Blackburn vs Man U - I thought that Man U had to win this match if they wanted to continue to be in the hunt for the Premier League. But then I remembered how Blackburn had sabotaged me by drawing with Chelsea a few weeks ago. So I decided not to punt. Good for me, the match was a goalless draw, with Man U showing how badly they missed Wayne Rooney, and how inadequate a replacement Berbatov is.The other decision I made, to punt on Tottenham vs Portsmouth is something I had cause to regret. On paper, it seemed like a sure win situation. Tottenham was chasing 4th place. Portsmouth were already relegated. They were in administration, the first team to enter administration while still in the Premier League. But I should have taken a few other factors into consideration. First, Portsmouth have a lot of players on pay as you play. That means that a lot of their best players were not available for the Premier League (which is why they did so badly in EPL). But the club evidently decided that the players could take a shot at the FA cup, which is why they did so well in the FA cup. This also means that a lot of their best players are still fresh, as opposed to other players in Tottenham who had to give their all week in week out.Second, since Portsmouth are down, a lot of their players are looking to leave the club. They obviously can up their game in this match, since a lot of people will be watching. I don’t know whether they still have their bonuses for winning the FA cup. The fact that they managed to beat Birmingham city in the last round (and Birmingham have been the best side this season outside those competing for the top 4 places) should have been a warning for me.Well, incredibly, they will meet Chelsea in the final. I don’t remember a team being relegated and reaching the FA Cup final since Middlesborough played against Chelsea in the 90s. (In fact Middlesborough reached the finals of both domestic cups, and lost both. Chelsea won the FA cup.)Portsmouth – a real sad story. There was an article the other day when David James, their keeper and one of their star players, said that winning the FA Cup was the beginning of the end for Portsmouth. The players were promised bonuses for winning the FA Cup in 2008, and paying out that bonus was something that effectively bankrupted the club. The managers thought that it wasn’t going to happen. Indeed, looking at the stats in the 2008 FA Cup, it was a topsy-turvy year. An incredible year for the FA Cup where a lot of sides were dumped out by teams from lower divisions. Portsmouth were very lucky to have won that FA Cup, because they only ever had to play 1 other team from the Premier League. (OK, that team was Man U in the quarter finals.) From then on, in the semis and the finals, they only had to beat WBA and Cardiff, both in the lower divisions. Which means that Man U, if they had managed to beat Portsmouth in that match, could conceivably have won the treble again that year and equalled the amazing 1999 season.This year, though, it was remarkable. They beat Sunderland, Birmingham and now Tottenham in the FA Cup. Not bad for a team in relegation form. So since Chelsea is going to play in the Champion’s League, does that mean that Portsmouth gets to play in the Europa League next year? Not bad for a bankrupt team in a lower division.Well Man U have screwed up, and it’s up for Arsenal and Chelsea to capitalise. Emotional avoidance I think I have to face up to it – I am a cold person. It’s only when you admit that you have a problem, then you are on the first step to solving that problem. The problems exist because you are not aware of it. People have characteristics, their brain is wired to ask some questions more prominently and others less so. So something like “what is the other guy like, what’s he thinking?” is something that unfortunately doesn’t rank very high on my list.There was this chick I had a short internet fling with some years back. And this wasn’t even like codfish because I had never met her in real life. At the end, after saying goodbye, she said, “you’re a little cold, you know.” At that time, I thought it was just some lame excuse, until it occurred to me: I probably did come across to people like that. But was it that I was really cold, or did I just seem like that?Then there was a friend Ghost. After 1 drunken tirade at Sniper (the same one which earned me the moniker “The Man”), he also proposed a nickname for me: ice. I thought it was funny at that time but have come to realise that it has some meaning. When I think back upon the times I played football, I was never good at it. My preferred position was usually central defence. Partly because you didn’t need a lot of skill, partly because I was big. My strength was that I didn’t panic easily. My weakness was that I was too passive. Both are the sides of the same coin. I was the iceman.When I spent 4 years in a cold and dark place, I paradoxically told myself that I loved winter, in spite of having grown up in a tropical country. It suited me because inside I was a little frosty. When I helped my sister move out of her North Carolina place, there was a dog who was scared of lightning. During a thunderstorm, it would come and look for me. I bitchily called it an "emotionally needy canine" and while my sister laughed at that, I think inside she must have been thinking, "this guy needs to open his heart".It’s true, that I make a lot of crazy jokes, but they help to counterbalance the coldness. I try to do the right thing, but when that happens, it’s because reason is guiding me, rather than because I know by instinct what the right thing is. I have to think about whether people are happy or sad, I have to find reasons. I have to be mindful and watchful.There has always been one constant in my life: I have had very little need for human contact. I have only ever felt truly alone on 2 occasions. One of them was when I was hanging out with a clique and I knew that nobody in that clique really liked me. But that was just a while. The other occasion was college. It was an extreme situation: being in a foreign country, I knew a few people, and I was alone most of the time. The winters were long and cold. But I was good at keeping myself occupied with things, trivial things and such – I probably suffered much less from this than most people in my situation would have done. Even when I was a kid, I remember that I was emotionally avoidant. It definitely wasn’t only that my mother was pushing me away emotionally, I was also doing the same to her. I was infamous at family gatherings, as a kid, for being the one who refused to kiss ppl goodbye. On one hand, it’s true that kids should not have to be subject to that bullshit. On the other hand it could not have been very endearing to the aunts that I would kiss them goodbye and wipe my lips afterwards. I was not Marcel Proust. I wasn’t born to thrive on human contact. My sister used to kiss me in order to irritate me. It worked. I would then make up stories about how her saliva was the most vile poison known to mankind (believable because she’s a scorpio). I have never excelled in inter-personal relationships. There are plenty of people out there who have much better relations with their parents than I had with mine. I don’t think my parents are bad people by the way. Even my mother who I consider to be a flawed person, has her strengths. But it could be true, as my sister once complained, that there is no love in the family. It’s easy to blame the parents for that but I think everybody (including myself) shares some responsibility. It’s too easy to blame your parents for teaching you the bad things. But this is from a book I read about relationships by Judith Rich Harris. What happens is that both the parents and the children have the genes that make them difficult to get along with. Then the parents and the children don’t get along, the parents aren’t very nurturing, partly because they are not inclined to be nurturing, and partly because the children are assholes. In this way, it is everybody’s fault.In brief, in many respects we are the typical asian family. Now that I have badmouthed my family, it’s time to give them some credit. My family, especially my father’s side, have gone through really tough times. My mother’s side also has a few strong characters. Surely I’m not alone in this: it’s an Asian thing. And the Asian way? Stoicism. We talk about fortitude, we talk about stamina, and we talk about ren3. That infamous word, which when written in Chinese is a knife blade on top of a heart - endure. And it is a very double edged concept, because while it is very useful for fortifying yourself against shit, it also has the effect of inviting people to give you even more shit. You had a great leader like Mao, he gave China the greatest famine of the 20th century, as well as the cultural revolution, and you still think he’s a great guy. That would make me think that Chinese people are the greatest fools on earth if not for the fact that recently North Koreans have proven themselves to be more worthy of that title.My problems have been different at different times. When I was younger and more clueless, I was blithely unaware of stuff that was going on all around me. When I was older, as a teenager, I got too wrapped up in my troubles that I was hardly aware that it would have been easier telling people about it... well actually a little hard because normally your family would be the first people you turn to for help. Sometimes my parents were there for me (especially if those are things they are interested in, like education, or sending me to the hospital when I break my bones). But I have never sought help from them for emotional problems for various reasons, one of which is that they themselves were a big source of those emotional problems. Again – some fairness. I don’t tell them my problems. And they have criticised me for not telling them my problems. But then again they haven’t been very good listeners either. Now that I’m an adult it’s a different story. There’s this scene in Zhang Yimou’s “Hero”, where the assassin is granted an audience with the emperor he was sent to kill. The emperor, well this was the Qin emperor and obviously no fool. He asked the assassin, are you here to kill me? The assassin said, “what makes you think so?” and the emperor pointed to a grid of candles between them. “There is evil qi emanating from you. You see? You have even managed to deflect all the candle flames.” Well, not that I want to kill people, but there is evil qi flowing out of me a little too often.Seen in this context, I would say that my brief, online relationship with codfish was one of the strangest, most atypical episodes of my life. It was almost as though, in 1 brief year I more or less compensated for the emotional barrenness of the rest of my life. But come to think of it, I don’t think it was hardly a coincidence that this took place when I was in college, at the one time when I was the most deprived of human contact – and yet when you are among Americans, you see a whole range of human contact you wouldn’t normally see among Asians. (To put it in a nice way). And she was an online entity to me. Your brain fills in the things that you cannot see, and it probably generated the image of a perfect girlfriend (until she started to mess up). When you have a real girlfriend, I’m sure you will find 1001 annoying things about her.When was the last time I did something for love? To be frank, a very very long time ago. I have to be a nicer person. Both for my own sake and for the sake of those poor ppl who have to occasionally put up with me. That will require some change. And I’m wondering where it will come from. Darth Vader There was this guy at work, I had often referred to him as Darth Vader. He was a capable person, good at his job, and is actually fairly high on the hierarchy, but is one of the least well liked people at work. He doesn’t scream at people or anything like that, but you always felt that he kept up his sleeve something hidden, like he had a knife sheathed somewhere that he could always pull out and do you in with if he felt it necessary. It was like he was the dark side. I heard stories told of him, that he would complain to your bosses if he didn’t like your face. That he was capable of underhandedness when he was in the mood. That he took people down very easily. People could work with him, and he could be reasonable most of the time, but they would be fearful of making mistakes, and in a way he stifled them. But one day, somebody told me a story at that Darth Vader told at his mother’s funeral. He had a hard life. His mother was a schizophrenic, and he had to deal with it for most of his life. His father refused to divorce her because she loved her, but he had to deal with not having a caring mother, or one that was constantly liable to do crazy things.Aside from this, it is all conjecture. But who could resist imagining the effect this had on the young Anakin Skywalker? The sullenness, the rage, the hurt. It is so much more difficult to open your heart out to people when you know that something terrible awaits you just around the corner. The terrible feeling of having to keep secrets from people, because there are things you couldn’t confide in just anybody. The sinking feeling of futility, where there is a lot of suffering, and there is no end to all that suffering, because the source of it does not go away.People have said before, that which does not kill you only makes you stronger. That statement, by the way, is utter rubbish. Because it’s like saying that everything is either good or bad, that everything either moves up, moves down, or stays the same. Duh. But what it does tell you is that adversity is a transformative experience. Some people feel that they triumph over adversity and take away from that experience a newfound confidence to deal with life’s challenges. Others get tossed and turned by the tide, and get callous and hard. The self defence mechanism that come up to deal with the problem becomes a permanent mask. The cynicism turns outwards, and where before it was possible to treat people with compassion, suddenly life becomes a process by which the strong crush the weak, and the only purpose in life is to avoid defeat. Something bad happens to you, then you end up saying, “life is unfair”. That is the first step on the slippery slope, because it quickly leads to: “life is unfair, so fuck everybody”. Then later on it becomes: “boy, it’s fun to fuck everybody”. (I use “fuck” here in the sense of cause harm to, rather than have sex with.) Then you put on glasses. Everything looks different when you have them on. Nobody has good intentions. Or they may just be good today and turn around and screw you tomorrow. Or I could want to be good, and everybody could want to be good, but it’s just so much easier to continue our old I fuck you you fuck me relationship. Why am I telling you all this, other than to get into big trouble with my bosses at work? Because I recognise that there is a (hopefully mild) version of this darkness in my own very heart. The times when I treat people more coldly than I should. The times when I hold people at 1 arm’s length. The times when I just lead people on a wild goose chase so that I don’t have to tell ppl too much. (OK, there are good reasons for being discreet, like other people don’t really want to know, other people don’t have much in common with you, other people won’t understand, etc.)To be fair to him, I have heard a lot of stories about him in the past. But not in the last few years. It could have been that he's toned down, it could have been that he's risen to a position that he's finally happy with. In any case, it could have been that he's changed. Anyway at my workplace, there was an initiative to make people behave more positively towards each other, and some of us were startled when we went for a course, and who else should deliver the opening address than Darth Vader? I suppose people were also surprised that Richard Nixon, a nominally conservative president, should have been the one who reached out to Communist China. But if even a conservative like Nixon thinks that US should not have a cold war with China, then it must be true. Similarly I think that even if Darth Vader thinks that it's important to be careful about personal relationships, you have to sit up and listen. Football Betting Season 2 Weeks 12 Usually I would write about the times when I did not put down a bet, and congratulate myself on my prescience because a lot of predictions I made would have been wrong. This time, though, I have to talk about how I passed up some opportunities to make money.Take last week’s matches for example. I would have supposed that Man U would have beaten Bolton, but I’m not sure. I would have supposed that Tottenham were better than Portsmouth, but I’m not sure. I would have taken Man City to beat Wigan, but I’m not sure. Then there were matches I wasn’t sure about. Liverpool vs Sunderland, Chelsea vs Aston Villa, Real Madrid vs Atletico Madrid, Mallorca vs Barcelona and Arsenal vs Birmingham. Except for the last one, the stronger team on paper won. And the last one was the one I had the most doubts about. So I could have ended up with a lot of money if I had bet on all these matches, and picked the stronger team to win. Except that I wasn’t sure about Chelsea, and had probably overestimated Aston Villa. Chelsea are very inconsistent but they are top of the table – says a lot about what the league is like this season, really. Well – more accurate to say that Chelsea’s form comes in spurts, with bad streaks alternating with streaks where they are just banging them in for fun.This week, though, I reverted to the ultra cautious approach and only bet on Man City to beat Burnley. The match isn’t over as we speak, but I should be safe: Man City are up 0-4 after 20 minutes. It would be one of biggest upsets of all time if Man City fail to win this match. I might bet on Real Madrid to win Racing Santander, and why not, since they no longer have the Champion’s League to distract them from La Liga. This week provides some evidence that you’re never completely sure that matches will go according to the form book. Aston Villa, so abject against Chelsea last week, managed to beat Bolton 0-1. Bolton were supposed to be more improved under Owen Coyle but they seem to be losing a lot of matches recently. Sunderland were thrashed by Liverpool but they broke Tottenham’s winning streak by beating them 3-1. Portsmouth were supposed to be relegated by now, but they held Blackburn 0-0. This is the same Blackburn which held Chelsea to a 1-1 draw a few weeks ago and made me lose $20. And Arsenal had to play 5 minutes of injury time before beating Wolves? No wonder they don’t exactly inspire confidence.About the outcome of the Premier League, at the moment Chelsea are ahead. People used to say that Arsenal had the easiest run-in, but that’s no longer true. Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal no longer have to face each other, and each of them has to face exactly 2 of the 4th place contenders – (Liverpool, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Man City). Man U has lost Rooney. Arsenal has lost Fabregas, Gallas, Van Persie and Arshavin. The good news is that Barcelona will probably knock them out of the champion’s league and they can concentrate on the EPL. Chelsea should win the EPL if they don’t cock up between now and the end (and you know, that is a very big if). Man U can win it if Berbatov can perform (but he can’t). So it will be very close between the 3, although Arsenal is the least likely of the 3 to win it.You know that the EPL is an absurd thing when one of the most compelling things is who will end up 4th. The favourites are Tottenham and Man City, but both of them have difficult run-ins. Which means that Aston Villa and Liverpool are still in it, although both of them have relatively lousy form at the moment. Among the relegation candidates, it looks straightforward. Portsmouth and Burnley will be relegated. The last relegation place will most likely go to either West Ham or Hull, but it’s possible that Wigan and Bolton could make a “late charge” for the championship. It’s very amusing that West Ham is threatening to sue Fulham for not fielding their best 11 against Hull, because they had to pay 30 million pounds to Sheffield United a few years ago for illegally playing Carlos Tevez, who did more than any other West Ham player to avoid relegation.There's one more thing that puzzles me about the EPL, and that is how a lot of Singaporeans use "we" to talk about their favourite team. To be fair, a lot of EPL club fans all over the world also talk about "we" too. If you're a Scouser and you go to the Kop every weekend, if you're the owner of a season pass, you can say, "we". But if you're just watching something on TV, then what gives? You wouldn't identify so closely with Chen Liping on your channel 8 serials, you're not even sure, when you watch Home United (oh the irony of that name) and you see a Brazilian pass the ball to a Camaroonian, whether they are "we". (But let's be fair to Home United - I just looked at their squad and it seems like they have comparatively few Singaporeans.)I was at a gathering of a few classmates, and I wasn't a football fan when I was in school, so this was the time for me to find out for once who was with who. Well at least people follow the English tradition of having your own "club" and being a fan for life. There was an Everton fan, a Tottenham fan, a Man U fan and a Liverpool fan. You have to give them credit to sticking to English football after 1985 when English teams were no longer the best in Europe. But still, "we?" If you were talking about Fandi Ahmad and company, yes you could say "we". If you talked about the 90s when it seemed that Malaysia was going to catch up with Singapore, when people still went to Johor without the fear of getting beaten up, you could see Singapore vs (some State team) as a natural thing, you could have the wonderful Malaysia Cup where every match was a derby match. In England, locality is very important. Especially if you were one of two teams that made up the same city (Manchester derby, Northeast derby, Merseyside derby, Birmingham derby, East Lancashire ie Blackburn- Burnley derby) you identified yourself by which tribe you belonged to. How do tribe affiliations measure up when it's a bunch of youngsters huddling in a pub thousands of miles away, or some old men pencilling some boxes onto an optical sheet, and then bringing those chits to a coffeeshop with a cable subscription?I think there's so much talk about football - you don't really want people to talk too much about politics in Singapore, neither do you want them to be talking about religion, unless in a church or a mosque. You don't want them nosing around and talking about the economy, so what do they talk about? Ever noticed that they're a lot of people talking about football in Singapore, Thailand, Dubai - relatively prosperous countries which aren't really that democratic?People talk about football because they want to avoid all these things. Because we were also talking about the integrated resort to these same guys, and one of them mentioned about the first law breaker at the casino. I said, "well they have a jail cell there, isn't it? The same one they used to put Chia Thye Poh in, just dump him there." There was a short, abrupt silence for a 1-2 seconds, and then the conversation continued somewhere else, but it was long enough, and noticeable enough for me to conclude that that wasn't quite something people wanted to comment on. (500) Days of Summer Just watched (500) Days of Summer. I hadn't dropped by the company clubhouse's VCD collection for a long time and when I did I was amused to find that there were only 3 VCDs that I really wanted to watch. I suppose they haven't been making a lot of acquisitions lately.A real boon for VCDs would be if all of them came with subtitles. The picture quality is so so only but OK. The worst is the muffled sound and you can't really hear the dialogue, so you sorda have to guess what's going on. Well luckily this one has subtitles! Yay!Anyway (500) Days of Summer is a great movie. No, actually it is merely an excellent one, but what makes it special is that it really reminded me of my own experiences. Seasoned readers of my blog should know who I'm talking about (and in case it's not absolutely clear, no, it's not about Teapot). The premise of the plot is simple. Boy loves girl, girl doesn't really love boy, they part. They tell you the ending in the beginning so you already know that. Even the title tells you that they broke up in the end. So it's not the outcome, but the process, which is the point of the tale.If you want to watch it, go ahead. It's good. The leads are likeable (this is very important in a romantic comedy. Zooey Deschanel is gorgeous, even though she's a little distant and cold as well. The guy, can't remember his name, has that constant tortured look on his face that you see on Bryan Robson every time he's reminded that he'll never be as good a manager as he was a player. What follows are spoilers.All this is familiar: the guy falls for her, then denies that he's in love with her. All the same he's a pain in the ass to his friends who have to deal with some of his emotional baggage. The guys warn him about her. Is she attractive? Yes she is. The balance of power in the relationship is tilted towards her? Yes. Would they have made great friends, if you forget the love bit? Probably. The way they play acted as real lovers was familiar. Even the arguments they had - whether or not he could be called a "boyfriend" - are familiar. Even "Let's not put labels on anything" sounds very very familiar. Even the singing of Clash's "Train in Vain", which was something I listened to quite a few times when she left, is familiar.There were a lot of good reviews for this movie, and evidently this was one that touched many hearts. There was even a centre spread on my paper that complained that this movie was overlooked by the Oscars. That's a bit of an exaggeration but it's true that romantic comedies get short shrift at the Oscars. There is a lot of this movie that is smart and funny and true, and when you take away that pretty indie-art flourishes and stylish touches, it still has a real heart underneath. The few that dissented complained that the movie does not say anything that's already been said before. While this might be true, all romantic comedies are done to death. Together with the action movie, this is one genre that has been over-saturated. Then again, to paraphrase Tolstoy, "All happy relationships are happy in the same way, but all unhappy relationships are unhappy in their own unique way." This was the justification for his writing yet another book about families. But it's a valid one. The twist in the movie is how some of the nuances have changed. It was said at the beginning that the guy believed in a one true love, whereas the girl didn't. At the end, we'll see, the truth is somewhat different. Some people have criticised the movie for focusing exclusively on the guy's point of view, but as somebody's noted, Zooey's is a static character, somebody who doesn't change or grow throughout the movie. If there is any mystery to her, it's only because the guy is so smitten with her that he can't see clearly. Otherwise, by the end of the story, we can piece together what she's like. From the guy's point of view, she was stringing him along all this time. She was using him for her ego, sending him mixed signals, alternating between pushing him away and pulling him back with some physical affection. From the girl's perspective, it's simple: she likes him a lot, but mostly as a friend. As with all my best friends, I don't want him to leave, but I don't want him to be my boyfriend either. I'll wait for him to realise his mistakes. I don't have a problem with that, but she should not have been intimate with him. Maybe she wanted to convince herself that they could be lovers, since he believed in that so badly. Is she a cold robot, as he accused her of being? An equally valid argument could blame him for being too stubborn to read all the signals. She was presented as being somebody who loves her hair, but also loves how she could cut it off. Beautiful women get to pick and choose and they can seem awfully cold if and when they exercise this privilege.So the twist is: even though she professes not to believe in true love, she's the one that gets married in the end. They even give a hint of this happening when they both attend a wedding and she catches the bride's bouquet. (In angmoh culture the person who catches the bouquet is the next to get married.) She believed in true love after all. She met THE ONE not long after she left the guy. It wasn't that she didn't believe in love: he was just not the right one for her. It was the central issue underlying everything that took place in the movie, and yet it had been glossed over time and again. Either way, he should have seen the light, and let her go.A few scenes showed them dating ogether, and there were already some subtle hints that they weren't getting along: watch how many times he makes fun of her for choosing Ringo Starr as her favourite Beatle. Watch how he seems to be having a great time, and is seemingly nonchalent to the fact that she's not feeling the same way. And if women end up saying cruel things in the end, sometimes it's the only way the guy's going to take the hint and leave.Therein lies one great disadvantage of being a chiobu. You attract the wrong company, the guys who think with their dicks. He really really enjoys your company, but he's also not thinking hard enough about whether you're compatible. The events are presented non-linearly, and I was glad I was watching this on VCD, because I was then able to piece together the general gist of it all: the first hundred days were total bliss. 200-300 were when all the cracks started appearing. They met again between 400-500, although she neglected to tell him that she was already seeing somebody else and later got engaged. And it was at this, most bitter period that he had to put his life back together. 500 days is roughly 1.5 years, also approximately the span of my whole involvement with the girl in my version. But for me the first 100-200 days had quite a bit of chasing. But similarly, it was not until day 500 that I managed to pull myself together. Towards the end, the show made for uncomfortable watching. The guy was practically a wreck. It probably wasn't so bad for me but it was still uncomfortable. Unfortunately or fortunately I was distracted by the travails of living in a foreign country. It took a long long time for the guy to recognise that he should let it go and cut loose. For me, I knew almost right from the start that this was going to be a short term relationship - I was only in it for experience points. But I got sucked in and carried away, and gradually believe that there could be a happy ending. This was not to be so and I had to revert to my original beliefs, although by that time, it was harder than I had imagined to let go.Then there is the very obvious difference that our relationship was carried out in cyberspace rather than in real life. But the close reading of her words, the scanning of them, reading between the lines for anything hopeful - that transcends whether this is cyberspace or not. It was a happy ending for the girl in the movie, but not in my case. In my case, the girl got married, but it wasn't a happy ending. And the girl in my case, intelligent though she is, never had as level a head as Zooey's character.I thought about what it meant for him to be a greeting card writer. Was he supposed to be an expert at manufacturing illusions? Are greeting cards necessarily insincere? Or was he in love with a shiny cold surface, the same surface you see on a greeting card? Was their love meant to be as beautiful and colourful and ultimately disposable as a greeting card? Why does he switch back to architecture? Is this a sign that his next love will be more meaningful and lasting? LA is not the first place you would think of for great architecture, but this movie has done a great job showing the artier side of the city, as opposed to our stereotypical notions of it as a vast cultural wasteland.He finds some chick in an interview, vying for his position. And he feels a spark, thinks that something could happen in a place like this. The girl's name is Autumn. Heh heh. Teapot part 2 Part 1I was silent for a while before she asked me, out of the blue, if I was going to participate in some company games. I said no, curious about why she asked me that. A few weeks later, I had some reason to ask her for stuff. Later on, on a whim, I just asked her out. We met, and then had a steamboat dinner. We were originally going to catch a movie after that, but since that movie was “500 Days of Summer”, where the guy gets dumped in the end, I was happy not to watch it. We had our first good talk. But she did ask me a few uncomfortable questions which seemed to hint to me that I might not be what she’s looking for. But it went well, and she even talked about me giving her piano lessons. We thought about going to the cinema afterwards, but in the end, we just said goodbye. I walked her home. She was in a good mood that night, and was humming to herself on the way home. Because of that I was in a good mood too. However it was a Wednesday, and I had foregone doing something that I normally do on Wednesdays, in order to make it on time for a date with her. I went right back to office to get it done.After that, I thought about how our lives were drastically different. She was somebody who moved around people the way a fish moves around water. Her life was centred around people, and she just hung around as many people as she possibly could. I, on the other hand, had a few pet projects to do, and I’ll do my life’s work (or at least I’ll try to do it) during my own time. I appreciate the people who pass through my life, but that’s not the main thing. We have very different priorities.Funny thing was that the piano she had in mind was in her office building, even though it was a secluded part of the office building. I thought it was weird. But it was weird that we had to date, possibly in view of the other people in her office watching. Then again, it must have seemed even more weird to her that 2 people in the same company were going out, and we had to be secretive about it. I can’t remember much of the exchanges that took place around that time. Later on, we went on another date. This time, we talked about going for a simple movie. It was “Astro Boy”, and I agreed to go, even though I didn’t like the movie. Unfortunately, the day before the date, I stayed up late. First, there was tennis at night, and after that, I was messing around with the main computer that my household shared. To my consternation, it crashed. I stayed up, trying to make it work again, I succeeded, but not before sleeping at 2. The next day, I was yawning throughout the movie, must have seemed really obnoxious to her, especially if it was clear that I didn’t enjoy it. I could tell that things weren’t going well that night. Of course, the thinking about what to say to her took mental effort, even though I should have been wary: I’m not cloistered around a small area. I live in a relatively large world. I read many books, I’ve seen quite a few things. And same goes for her. And if 2 people who live in such large worlds don’t have anything to say to each other, then what hope is there? That’s the problem with our world today. It’s become so large, that people can just live in their niches and pass through each other like ships in then night. It’s not like the old days where people all had to have common lives, common interests that they may not completely like, even though it gives them something to talk about to each other.You had to think of her life, and what she valued. She valued her friendships, her relations with her department. I hardly knew them. It was going to be awkward in any case. Ultimately the odds were stacked too heavily against me.There were a few conversations that stood out. Like how she said that she was always busy. I said, well, OK. Good people are busy. Then she asked me if I thought that I wasn’t a good person. Why the hell would I not be a good person? Was she fobbing me off now? I bored her. That was when I suspected that it was not going to work out. Impulsively, I told her that I liked her a lot. That was very cold of me. It’s like saying, “you either continue going out with me, or we can end this friendship right now.” It’s my way of slamming the door on her. But in the end my motives were suspect. Why did I go after her when I wasn’t sure I wanted her as a friend? When a girl wants you as a friend, it is a way of allowing herself to not feel so bad about rejecting you. But I didn’t want that. We should just go back to being strangers. I felt upset for 2 weeks after that but I got over it quickly, as far as I can tell. It’s easy to say that you’re OK, and easy to say that you’ve forgotten her, but these things leave their traces behind, in the form of the attitudes that you take in the future. Maybe you’re not going to be as enthusiastic the next time around. Maybe when you meet the next one you will just want her to suffer a little bit more. Anyway the sting was nowhere as long and as deep as it had been on a certain previous occasion.As I mentioned earlier, I’m still not sure who I should be going after. Maybe in a way I’ve never been in love, or never got past that drug hit of being in love for the first time, to the more solid footing of a steady relationship. The way I put it to myself after leaving codfish was “it’s just like being a drug addict isn’t it? It’s just needing her all the time, the way you need drugs all the time.” It was just something shameful and degrading.OK, I called her “teapot” because she was short and stout. But also because she’s hot. I suppose it was somewhat superficial why I went after her. I wasn’t really thinking of her as a girlfriend. But she was approachable, which was probably the main reason why I made an attempt. I didn’t think we were especially compatible. What was attractive was that she seemed so normal, seemed to have a social life. She was possibly the sanest person that I was attracted to (although she’s a little too emotionally involved to be working for my company). There are some ladies who would remark that I'm too nerdy. True enough, but a lot of the times the girls would be not nerdy enough. Where's the geek talk about philosophy, movies, politics? Geeks have standards too.I don’t see her much after that. But at least I found out if things were going to work out. (They weren’t.) Home Sweet Home It’s strange to get your old name back. I liked this name, and the new name I used in the interim was a compromise. Even though I don’t listen to Andrew Hill that much. (RIP Andrew Hill - he died while I was over at the other blog) Calling myself numbernine was hardly… well, it wasn’t really something I identified with. Then again, as much as I felt that Andrew Hill’s music was “my music” now the feeling is less when I hear it. I think we all move on.It was a few years ago when I closed this blog and unpublished all the entries. (Except for the one left behind.) I can’t help but to compare the person I was then and the person I was now. I was in a rut. It felt alright back then but now I can clearly see that I was in a rut. I wasn’t sick of the things I was doing back then but I am sick of them now. Since then I’ve had some good times (the US trip, the marathon, wrote some good music) and some disappointing ones. If I can’t bear to say that I’ve had some bad times, then life must indeed be good. But I’m still in a rut, just less of a rut than it was back then. I’ve grown, I’ve matured. I wouldn’t recognise some of the things that I was like back then. I save my blog entries, of course. And if I were to read them, I’d find somebody who’s interested in different things from what I got right now. Times are moving on, and I’ve had cause to close the lid on relationships with 2 people I hardly know but who have affected my life in very strange ways. First there is –ben (RIP). And there is water girl. Good riddance to both of you, I have 2 fewer reasons to feel bad about myself. I'm not glad that -ben is dead but I'm more than glad to have my blog back. And to Nat, who by 2 incredible coincidences, was strategically placed to make the connections for me, thank you. (I know you did nothing, so thank you for nothing.) And a few regrets about the relationships – I see that I could conceivably have been friends with those 2 if I had done things differently. But not a big loss.I've toyed with the idea of making life miserable for water girl (not that hard since she lives in my block) but the other night, I had a dream, where I was sitting down with her, and she was asking all sorts of questions about life and we were discussing this in a completely platonic way. Then I suppose, this is the situation. She's just dumb and confused. She doesn't have a boyfriend. Anybody who looks as hot as she is and can't hold on to a proper boyfriend is a bit of a loser. Judging from the way she rejected my advances, we can safely conclude that she's a bad judge of character. She should be given a helping hand. Maybe a leg up. Maybe I can get her leg up. Whatever.I’ve gotten better at my work. I’ve opened some horizons. I have indulged myself in some ways and just as well – you should live out some of your bad habits long enough to fully understand that they are bad habits. Disillusion yourself a little. I’ve gotten rid of some bad habits – at least they have become less manageable. But I’ve closed some other horizons at the same time. I’ve lost touch with some friends (not many because I never had that many at the same time.)There was a blogging scene, and it has split up. 2006 was an election year, and a lot of blogs talked about the election. But after all that fire, it wasn’t sustainable. I don’t read blogs as much as I used to. And the distressing thing is that I was searching for a new life back then, and in a way I still am. More significant than the progress that was made was the progress that was not made. The old sieteocho was living his life in the 20s, and was OK with being cheerfully irresponsible while doing so. But it’s less OK when you grow older. When you grow older, you’re supposed to develop a broader set of shoulders so that you can bear more weight, weight that would have crushed a mere child. When you grow old, it always gets harder, because in life there is a tendency to do all the easy stuff first. The really difficult things to master take time, and possibly you will never master them ever. But you can always try. You can always try until the day you die. Apology I recognize and accept that a number of statements that I made on my on-line journal “Seksi Matafaka”, were defamatory of A*STAR, its Chairman, Mr. Philip Yeo and its executive officers.I admit and acknowledge that these statements are false and completely without any foundation.I unreservedly apologize to A*STAR, its Chairman Mr. Philip Yeo, and its executive officers for the distress and embarrassment caused to them by these statements.I undertake not to repeat the statements, or make further statements of the same or similar effect in this or any other forum or media. I further undertake to remove any such posting anywhere that has not been deleted.(NB: for avoidance of doubt, the above is fake notice and a homage to Acidflask.We will remember this.You only die once and you might as well do it in style.) The End I'm reading "The Long Emergency" by Kunstler. There won't be enough time before this blog closes down for me to write about it properly. But this is probably important enough that you will have to think about it.Sometime in the middle of this century, we will face a very severe oil shortage. There have been hopes that we will eventually find an alternate source of energy, but the whole point of oil is that it's cheap energy. Alternate sources will not be as cheap. This means that the world economy that we knew in the 20th century - everything, will be gone.The leaders of the world are loath to talk about this. They know that the one other thing our economy runs on is "consumer confidence", and if they don't watch what they say, the economy will slow down on their watch, and they'd be out of office in an instant. In the short term this is the responsible thing to do, but not in the long term.The downside of democracy is that the government is run by the people, and people generally don't give a fuck about the environment.Crude oil is not only about fuel. One reason why the population of the world can be 6 billion people is because we have new agricultural methods which increase yields per land area. These methods work because of the use of a lot of fertilisers. Where do these fertilisers come from? Crude oil. So it's not only cars that run on crude oil, human beings also run on crude oil.What happens when there is a severe economic depression? The last time this happened, it led to World War II. Granted, there were other causes, but the 1930s were a time when it seemed that liberal democracy had failed. If the world economy dies because we run out of oil, it is very very possible that we will all start to kill each other. During the Cold War, we had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world a few times over, but the only thing stopping us is that life's too good, people are too well off.At the end of the long emergency, it's possible that the population of the world would be half of what it is today, which is probably a good thing because our planet wouldn't be able to support so many people anymore.So people of our generation, be forewarned. Around the time we turn 70 or so, we will witness something fairly horrible. You Really Got Me What is a melody, after all? It is a meme. And as in evolutionary theory, the most selfish meme will survive. A good piece of music could be catchy, but doesn’t necessarily have to be. But its appeal should transcend cultural boundaries, that would be really good, and most importantly you could play it 100 times (not consecutively), and you would not get tired of it.For me, the 100 times test is the most important test in distinguishing between a good and a lousy piece of music. “Pachelbel’s Canon” for me fails this test. I got sick of it by the 5th time and I really can’t listen to it anymore. But the funny thing is that it appears so many times in pop music in (to these ears) vastly superior renderings that I wonder if it wasn’t just something that was very sloppily done.Pachelbel’s Canon appears in:“In My Life” by the Beatles“Pictures of Lily” by the Who“Love in the First Degree” by Bananarama“Debaser” by the Pixies“Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” by XTCWhy does “You Really Got Me” pass this test? Possibly because there are dramatic elements to this music. First thing is the riff, and you could play it over and over again, it’s catchy. It’s actually a mini conversation between the guitar and the drums, but more than that, it is also a contrast between figure and ground, the guitar fills up the first half of the measure, and then there is silence, only broken by the drums. Then there is the asymmetry between the 2 halves. GGFG-XX-. The GGFG is contrasted with the -XX-.These are quirks that make the music interesting. The fact that you can pack so many interesting things into an 8 note figure is what makes this a great riff. If you know information theory, there is a lot of information in here.Then the melody comes in. “Girl, you got me going baby, you got me so I don’t know ...” etc etc. The melody is in counterpoint with the riff. Sounds simple, but the features: First a long note (or a short one followed by a rest.) Provides a window for the riff to peek through. Then “you got me going baby” goes against the riff half of the time and goes with it the other half, providing an interesting contrast. Then “you got me so I don’t know...” builds upon the idea introducedThe melody never fills up the entire space, and similarly when you are having a good conversation no one person is talking all of the time. The play between the silence and the music is there.Then a few lines down, the melody gathers steam, first by going into the (second note), then the dominant note. Why does it feel so good when he starts singing “you really got me, you really got me” at the end? Let’s go back to the beginning. First there is some tension caused by the abrasive contrast between the melody and the riff. Then the tension is escalated by transposing the melody to 2 different keys. But at the end he releases it, and finally sings in unison with the guitar figure, meaning that these 2 sources of tension are gone in one fell swoop. What does this remind you of? Well rock and roll is all about sex.A fairly convoluted piece of analysis, to be sure. But you have to listen to it to see how it works. I’m describing to you like 30 seconds of music, and I have uncovered so much meaning in 30 seconds of music. Only an ignorant fool would say, “because this is pop music, it ain’t worth shit.” You and I know better: this is a classic. Squeaky Bum Time When I first started tuning into the English Premier League, it was probably due to my sister and 2 of my cousins who were Man U supporters. 1994 was a special year for both Man U and the Singapore National team. For Man U, it was their first great team under Alex Ferguson, when Schmeichel, Bruce, Pallister, Ince, Kanchelskis, Keane, Cantona, Giggs and Hughes were in that side. They steamrolled their way to the title: of course later on Arsenal and Chelsea would win league titles in the same invincible fashion, but that was the first time in a long while anybody had such complete dominance over the league. For Singapore, it was our League and Cup double, although it turned out that Abbas Saad had bribed some opponents to lose, and that tarnished the result. Also it was the last season in the Malaysia cup and, with all due respect to the S League, the end of the glory days.But later I discovered soccernet and eventually it turned out that the mind games were some of the most interesting part of the English Premier League. It was, for me, an introduction into the fascinating world of political science.There was that season when Newcastle led the league by 12 points at Christmas, and everybody assumed they were going to win the trophy. Then slowly but surely, Man U crawled their way back up. This was the year of Fergie's fledglings, one of whom was David Beckham. Remember, Alex Ferguson had just dismantled the class of 94. That was the season when a commentator said "you'll never win anything with kids". But amazingly they caught up. They were playing Leeds (where are they now?) and Newcastle would play them 1 week later, then Alex Ferguson egged them on by accusing them of being softer on Newcastle than Man U. Incredibly, the Newcastle manager had a meltdown in response to this comment, saying, "I'd love it if we beat them." It didn't augur well for their club. Man U won the title.You had to know the situation: when you're 12 points ahead at 1 stage, but the gap gets closed down, the pressure is immense. Lose a tight race, and nobody will blame you too much. Lose a 12 point lead, and you're a loser for the rest of your life.Then there was the treble season when they were neck to neck with Arsenal, having lost the league title to them 1 year earlier. Won the league by 1 point. There was this crazy situation where every game was a must-win game for them, and incredibly they won all the 3 titles: all 3 of them were close calls. They had to claw back the lead from Arsenal in the league. In the FA cup, they had extremely close calls against Arsenal and Liverpool, and it was a substitute - Sheringham, who scored the winning goal. As for the Champion's league, ask any Man U fan and he will explain to you what happened against Bayern Munich.Anyway what happened this weekend was dramatic enough. Man U had been leading by 9 points at 1 stage. They were looking to win the league comfortably, but they slipped up against Portsmouth and blew the race open. Yesterday they could only draw against Middlesborough. That handed the advantage to Chelsea. In fact I was near expecting Chelsea to capitalise and win against a non- performing Newcastle side. I think most of us were. I was thinking that this could be the beginning of a great Man U catipulation, because a lot of games would have to be played in the near future without many key Man U players in the side.Now this Mourinho fellar is interesting. He used to complain about having to play his matches after Man U, because every time Man U wins, he gets extra pressure to match that win. The problem is that Man U today offered Chelsea the golden opportunity to cut that lead to 1 point. And amazingly Chelsea failed to take advantage of it. I say amazing because Chelsea had the fewer injuries of the 2 teams. Man U had Gary Neville, O'Shea, Saha, Vidic and Park out. Chelsea are usually seen as a team which doesn't choke, but for some reason they choked. They only drew against Newcastle, which means Chelsea are back to 3 points behind.When your opponent hands you an advantage, ironically there is additional pressure for you to take advantage of it.Equally fascinating is the relegation battle at the bottom of the table. Watford just got relegated, but there are 2 more slots, and they could be filled by 2 of these 5 teams: Charlton, West Ham, Sheffield United, Wigan Athletic and Fulham. A few weeks ago, Charlton and West Ham were certainties, but no longer, even though they are both still in the relegation zone now. If any of the 3 above them continue their bad run of form, that's the end for them.In the other game today, David James set a premiership record for the most number of clean sheets. It's very nice to see somebody pick up 1 more accolade at this very late stage of his career. In the race, I think I wouldn't mind being in the 9th of 10th position in the league: too low to compete for Europe, but safe from relegation. Just play your matches, harry a little if you're slipping, but mostly stress free maintenence. Although it's actually a very dangerous mindset to have. I usually think of clubs like Southampton, Derby, Charlton, Sunderland, Coventry who were in this happy situation 1 season and suddenly 1 season later, gets sucked into a relegation battle the next season. Andrew Hill, 1937-2007 One of my favourite jazz pianists, Andrew Hill is dead.Andrew Hill, as you know, is the composer of "Siete Ocho", after which this blog is named. I have thought of writing him and asking for permission to adopt the name for a music group, but I guess I'll never get to do that.He was under- appreciated in life. But it is definitely true that his music just wasn't designed for mass consumption. In terms of complexity and originality, he is peerless. He was working until the very end. At an age where people 20 years younger than him would be past their prime, he was still making top class music - his "Dusk" was named as one of the best jazz albums of 2001.I'll tell you why it's wonderful to be young. I remember there was a time when I was still discovering indie music. Hearing all those albums for the first time: The Smiths, the Stone Roses, REM, Matthew Sweet, David Bowie, Prefab Sprout. And attaining a level of comprehension that wasn't there before, it was wonderful. Not really to hear for the first time, but rather, after a few listens, to have all the pieces fall together in your head. Because all those pieces are just manifestations of a "meta music". It's like, if you understand the underlying logic behind a few pieces of music which are similar, you will be introduced to a whole new system of musical logic and grammar, which on its own, can generate an endless amount of new music.I've had 2 such experiences in my life. An epiphany with indie music, and then a second epiphany with jazz music. And Andrew Hill's "Point of Departure" was very much a part of the second epiphany.By the way, thanks very fucking much to a certain person out there who is dragging the name of "Siete Ocho" through the mud. Debut directorial effort (originally posted in 2004)This took place 6 years ago, when I was in a hotel in Chicago. I was travelling with A and B (I'm protecting their identities here.) B wanted all of us to get drunk. I didn't really like the idea because I was feeling a little puritan but we went ahead anyway.Later that evening, fuelled with alcohol, I wasn't very happy about all that drunkedness. I drank my share but made sure that A and B were more drunk than me. I then decided that we were going to make a documentary about the debauchery that people are capable of when they have too much to drink. Considering that it was my first time directing a film, that the dialogue was ad libbed, and that I was drunk I think it was a fairly decent effort.When I say "decent" I am of course referring to the artistic quality of the film, not the contents.Written, directed and acted by: sieteocho (7-8).Acting / live prop: ACinematography, editing and off-screen commentary: BThroughout this short film, only A and 7-8 are on camera. B is holding the camera, although he provides some off-screen commentary.All 3 are drunk. This entire film was done in 1 take, and composed of various shots spliced together.Titles: This video intended for mature audiences only. Rated R. Copyright 2001.7-8: (shot from bottom, arms raised in triumph) I’m really impressed with myself tonight! YAAAAAARRRRGH!!! (cue music: van Halen, "Jump". The part where David Lee Roth is screaming his head off.)Subtitle: Starring 7-8 as himselfSubtitle: Starring A as himselfSubtitle: Exclusive interview.Subtitle: Raphael Hotel, ChicagoSubtitle: 7-8: the man and his ideas.Subtitle: What is the act of sex?7-8: What is the act of sex? One human being comes together with another human being he really likes and he does the wild thing with him you know what I mean?Subtitle: Foreplay and Orgasm.7-8: Normally when you think about sex you think about the orgasm but the orgasm is just, you know, just the result of sex. It’s not the process of sex you know. It’s like the end of the journey but it’s not the journey itself. And a wise man said that it’s the journey itself that matters, not the destination of the journey.B: (murmurs of assent, like Paul Shaffer in David Letterman shows)7-8: And now I propose that the act of sex is not the, you know, act itself but rather the foreplay.B: Yeaaah!!7-8: And right now we are going to capture the foreplay on film. We’re going to be a part of the action here man. (Camera pans to bed. A is lying there, dead drunk.)You know something?B: Yeah?7-8: The bed is trembling right now. He’s vibrating.B: Because he’s cold.7-8: No… not because he’s cold, but because he’s secretly turned on.B: Ohhhh….A: Go away! Get lost! You’re crazy!B: (laughing unkindly) he’s afraid….7-8: No no no…B: He’s asking for it….7-8: You got it. He’s asking for it. So right here, right now, we are going to consummate the LUST we have been building up towards each other for … you see he’s trembling with excitement right now…A: I’m not trembling with excitement. (more laughter from B) I feel really sick right now…7-8: He’s really sick? Does the television audience really believe that he’s just sick?B: NOOOOOOOO!!!7-8: Despite all my pretensions towards being very experienced in the field of sexual topics, you know, …B: yeah…7-8: (facing camera) I have to admit. I am a virgin. So like right now I need something to decrease my inhibitions. So I’ll just have a drink right now, you just stay there where you are, and after I’m done with this I’ll just come over to fuck you in a second. (more unkind laughter from B)A: (piteously) shut up.B: Yeah baby…7-8: He’s being coy. There’s a lot of shit in my head, you know. This thing, like, really puts a lot of shit in your head….B: The pose he’s in right now, of course he’s not exactly drunk.A: (getting up) go away…(cue music Van Halen’s “Right Now”: Don’t wanna wait til tomorrow, why put it off another day?. Subtitles: Go away… he just wants it.)7-8: It’s the extent towards which I am sexually attracted to him. No no no don’t look at me. Go look at him.(7-8 and A still have their clothes on, but you can clearly see that 7-8 is banging his hips into A’s arse)Come on let’s do it! I’m going to do it right now!!(to B) Can you see me? Can you see me? Yeah man. You going to do it right now? Focus, zoom. This is about him and me now. (B starts to tilt the camera for special effect) No no no… don’t turn the camera now. Keep it straight. Yeah. Focus on the hip action....3 CommentsYou should digitize and post this video so that I can whack off to it.By the way, you now have access to my livejournal. It's not as interesting as yours.Posted 10/10/2004 at 11:53 PM by giddyninjaAt least you write about your real life in your livejournal which is more than what I have. What you mean to say is that my imagination is more interesting than your real life. Well duh. Don't you think that it's a little like scraping the bottom of the barrel that I have to resort to recounting interesting events in my life that took place years ago?The video is in digital form, but for obvious reasons I'm restricting the circulation.Posted 10/11/2004 at 9:28 PM by sieteochoYou mean all that hoo-hah with that woman who lived in your block of apartments was fiction?Damn! You had me fooled. You're a very good writer.Posted 10/14/2004 at 9:43 AM by giddyninja Music and I As a kid, I must have looked up upon those faces gazing down at me from the wall in my music class. I still remember some of them: Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven. Austere, dignified, the gatekeepers of the music. Ang mors, all of them. That same music that you had to master in order to avoid getting whacked by either your parents or your teachers. So beautiful and yet so ghastly.I took to music like a fish takes to water. Music is the art form that I take to the most easily. If I am not a musician, I am not an artist, possibly I would be nothing. It is a strange amalgam of structure, logic and beauty. Perhaps besides music only architecture is so structural as an art form. Some people appreciate beautiful surfaces, I tend to appreciate beautiful structures.I did not enjoy learning the piano, but somehow I made it to Grade 8. My parents, and I guess I did too to some extent, appreciated the logic that it "would be a shame" if I didn't go to the end. When I stopped, it was conventionally assumed that I was a drop out. Or maybe not that much of a drop out, since I finished Grade 8. But in retrospect, my musical education had just begun.Music appeals to your heart, your ass and your head. In that order. Intellectualising about music can never pass for true appreciation of music, and even more so because language and music are two fundamentally different modes of appreciation.For example, I cannot write down a maths equation, show it to a person who doesn’t understand maths, and explain why it is so aesthetically appealing. It makes so little sense, it’s almost like explaining, without drawing pictures, why a 36-24-36 is better than a 30-28-35. Aesthetics is something that is somewhat innate to human nature, as in you show a 36-24-36 to most males in the world, and they would be interested. But quite why it’s 36-24-36 and not some other ratio is a peculiarity. Similarly why we would find certain arrangements of notes more appealing than others is a mystery, but it is certainly there.It's almost blasphemous to say this, but 10 years of classical music never did it for me. It only made sense when I could hear a simple song, take it apart, and then tell the difference between good and bad. If had hadn't been turned on to pop music, I would never have appreciated classical. All that music theory, it hardly prepares you to make the most important distinction in music: between good music and bad music. And it’s not like I can give you an exam on it - there are bound to be too many controversial calls. But too many people have questionable taste in music, even those very highly educated (in music, that is) An analogy would be people who can write essays where the grammar is perfect but the meaning is nonsensical.What do I think about music? I never saw it as a performance art. It was never about standing on stage. I'm of the CD generation, which means I'm later than the vinyl generation, which is later than the performing-live-is-everything, but I'm an old fogey to the people who walk around with iPods and MP3 players*. I've written more than 20 songs, and I've never written them down, or shared them with anyone, or performed them. I have absolutely no inkling what it'd be like, no idea what it'd be like to perform them on stage. I know that I have to do something about them pretty soon, but I don't know what.* I came across a quote by Edward de Bono who tries to explain the appeal of walkmans, and it's faintly derogotary: "A generation brought up on watching 30 hours a week of television was in need of constant stimulation. Habits of internal stimulation (such as thinking) had never been developed. Without external stimulation, the brain was inactive. Thus the portable tape recorder provided the ideal means of providing stimulation wherever you went." As for me I never found any use for an iPod because I can basically play in my head any song I know well enough: drums, bass, guitar, all the parts. Practical advice A great prank. It occurred to me when I was mass SMSing this morning.1. Steal somebody's handphone.2. Send this SMS to everybody in his list: "Hello everybody, I've changed my hp number to (insert non-existent number). Pls take note."3. Watch the chaos ensue.How to find out whether your spouse is having an affair:Pretending that you are carrying out the above as a prank, and insert your own telephone number. This is better than hiring a private detective. When the person you suspect your spouse is having an affair with calls up, indulge in heavy breathing, and hope that the person speaks first. Then freak him out by screaming obscenities into his face. A great prank. It occurred to me when I was mass S... A great prank. It occurred to me when I was mass SMSing this morning.1. Steal somebody's handphone.2. Send this SMS to everybody in his list: "Hello everybody, I've changed my hp number to (insert non-existent number). Pls take note."3. Watch the chaos ensue.How to find out whether your spouse is having an affair:Pretending that you are carrying out the above as a prank, and insert your own telephone number. This is better than hiring a private detective. When the person you suspect your spouse is having an affair with calls up, indulge in heavy breathing, and hope that the person speaks first. Then freak him out by screaming obscenities into his face. Violence We talk about our love for violence. We think that it takes the form of kids like the Korean guy in Virginia Tech, or Columbine High. Of the sex and violence that comes through on mass media and television. We think about Jackie Chan, Rambo, Schwartzenegger.But I think it goes deeper than that. I think we have a love for war, and that we are genetically evolved to have a propensity for violence. We talk about people being at war, and how they come back from the frontier and tell their grandchildren war stories, about how it somehow becomes the defining experience of their lives. They almost miss killing a bunch of Japs / Germans.There is an extremely close relationship between physical violence and moral heroism. The war in Iraq is a moral crusade to topple a tyrant. World War II was a heroic struggle against the evils of fascism, and the Cold war a struggle against the evil commies.This talk has translated into the language of Mutual Assured Destruction, with the attendent echoes of the idea of the berserk warrior. There is a disproportionate amount of spending on the Department of Defence. The National Security Council meetings are very important because they tackle the "real" issues of government, instead of the "soft" issues like health care, or, like, the fiscal deficit. If you want to be a real minister in Singapore it helps a lot if you are a general first.If you go to the bookstores, there will be 1 gigantic section talking about war. I've read 1 or 2 war books, but I can't see myself going on. It's the same shit over and over again: who's taking what hill, people dying of disease, spectacular strategic blunders. I wonder how come this boring shit sells so well. But that's like the lowest common denominator, because that's the one thing anybody who has any passing interest in history would understand.Of the 2 big dynamics that underly human relationships - competition and co-operation, we tend to emphasise the former, so much so that Darwin's theory of evolution comes to be seen in almost exclusively competitive terms, and those people who want to point out the co-operative aspects of interaction between the agents in the system have to scream so loudly that they are only being heard now.I'd say that a lot of acts of terrorism have to do with perceptions of inequality. Am I surprised that the Korean guy who did this is a middle class student in a university? I don't think so. So many of the guys who carried out 9/11 were university graduates. Terrorism is a middle class occupation. But in the note that Cho left behind, he did bitch a lot about rich and snooty classmates. And of course there's this guy who has to right the wrong. And back then when Raskolnikov from "Crime and Punishment" was to commit his murder cum robbery, just before the act, Dostoevsky supplied the reader with copious descriptions of poverty and wretchedness. The act of robbery and murder is inextricably linked with his delusions of being a crusader for justice.In May 2001 I came across an issue of Newsweek magazine which talked about the "banality of evil", about how people who committed great acts of violence turn out to be mild mannered, quiet introverts. Like the Unabomber, and Jeffrey Dahmer, and now Cho. I thought up a short story that had a plot like this:This guy boards a plane, and it appears he is on a business trip, which he is. An attractive lady sits next to him, and he talks with the lady for a bit, and they sense some kind of a connection. It's obvious this guy has been lonely for a long time, and there's this vague sense that things are going to get better. Then the lady falls asleep on his shoulder. Afterwards, he thinks about his life back at home and his family. He gets a little disturbed for a while, then he decides, business is business, and he gets down to his work, which is to hijack that aeroplane and set off a bomb on board.But as I was about to write it, 9/11 happened, so that project was shelved.So that guy is a playwright, like I once aspired to be a playwright. Well having an appreciation for art is not really a guarantee that you won't turn out to be a mass murderer. Adolf Hitler was an art student. Phil Spector: enough said. Kim Jong Il a notorious movie buff. Endangered motherfuckers I love this story! The use of the f word There's this fascinating book I saw in the library. It's called "the 70s: how we got here". I've not read it yet but when I do it will be too late to talk about it on this blog because it would cease to exist. The thesis is that a large part of our lifestyle was shaped in the 70s and not a lot of things have changed sinced then. It's a fascinating thesis, and one I will be keen to explore.One of the things is that people became more rude to each other in the 70s. Why? The name of this blog has an f word in it. Seksi matafaka is "sexy motherfucker" in Malay spelling. But some people complained it was too rude, so it became sexy mother - shut your mouth.So why are youngsters swearing so much nowadays? People from the older generation always complain about this because it's very offensive to them. Well here are some reasons why, and you can either think hard about them, and learn a bit about the world we live in today, or you can pretend you've never seen this article.1. Liberalism.In a way, values have become more liberal. This is a truism. But it is not enough to say that values have become liberal. The question is why. And this is not easy to explain. You can say that we got influenced by the West. But this is problematic. The West was conservative in some periods and not others.It is more accurate to say that we get influenced by our impression of westerners, rather than real westerners. We meet the select group of them who find their way to our shores, instead of the rest of them.And lest people think that this is a phenomenon that is confined to the youngsters, it is worthwhile to remember that one man who has held the highest office in the world is known to have a foul mouth. I'm talking about Bill Clinton. Let's forget for a moment that he got sucked off in the oval office. He was the first baby boomer president, and was one of the "1968 generation". Also, there's Joashka Fischer, the German foreign minister, who was a student protester back in 1968.Maybe it's still important for many other leaders in other countries to behave in a more socially acceptable way. But the point is that a lot of people in high places have fairly liberal ideas now.2. The decline of authoritarianismSociety has become less respectful of authority. There was the US experience of Vietnam, where people in the younger generation were constantly questioning the government why people were being sent to a far off land to die. In 1968 riots erupted all over the world, taking authority down a few notches.The power of traditional forms of authority has been eroded over the years, because power and knowledge no longer reside in the hands of a few. Because of improved communications, and I'm not talking only about the internet, power is up for grabs for everybody.3. The decline of stigma against sexThere was the sexual revolution as well. A lot of swear words are highly sexual in nature. Now this conflation of profanity with sex, something I never fully understood.Now sex feels good. It makes for cordial relations between married couples. People reproduce from sex. Best of all, under certain circumstances, it is free of charge. So why do people think of it as a bad thing?There are consequences. Having a child out of wedlock is very serious business. There's this chapter in Freakonomics which argues that crime rate has gone down largely because abortion was legalised 20 years earlier. I think he'll get a lot of flak for that, but the arguments are plausible.But when you have contraception and abortion, there's one less really really big reason for sex to become immoral.Another reason why sex is immoral is AIDS. Well, can't do much about that. But if you are in a faithful relationship with somebody who doesn't have sex with the rest of the world, it's not a problem. This means that you don't even have to be married.Actually AIDS is a serious problem. 40 million people in the world today are HIV positive. And it's not like cancer, heart disease or diabetes, because it kills young people in their prime.The third reason why sex is immoral is because sex outside of a lurving caring relationship is problematic. People get hurt. Some religious nuts think that sex is only for procreation. These people are wrong. But I think that the only other reason is to enhance relationships between men and women. Having it only for pleasure kinda makes life empty. But this consequence is not as serious as the other two.So, paradoxically, even this time honoured tradition of shoving somebody's body part in and out like an engine piston has its meaning utterly transformed in our day and age. Bottom line: sex has simply become less offensive.4. StressLife has become less like slow sex and more like gang rape. In human history, the transition of mankind from hunter-gatherers to agriculture has resulted in a lower standard of living, because it makes a larger number of people more dependent on a few. It couldn't be helped, population is rising and there was no way a hunter gatherer lifestyle could be sustained on a much larger level.A big reason why life is stressful is because of the larger population. Larger populations make life wonderful for a few people at the top of the pyramid but really bad for everybody else. Remember some motherfucker thinks that Singapore can support 6.5 million people? What an asshole.5. Structure of societyThe 1990s saw the rise of Silicon Valley, where a lot of college geeks could change the world through technology firms. The richest man in the world today is a computer nerd.Life has become more complicated. It's more difficult to be autocratic when you're running a large organisation. Management guide books tell you that you can't merely look at every part of your business as though it were a black box, but when your organisations are so large, no CEO of a sufficiently large company can ever understand everything. In a way this point is closely related to point 2 where traditionalPoint is, this. If you say "fuck" to a superior, that's insubordination. If you say that to a subordinate, that's misuse of power. The most likely person you're going to use the f word on is a peer, and if society has become more horizontal, then there are more opportunities to say the f word.6. Hokkien is a great language for swearingNow when it comes to getting a kick out of swearing, "fuck" or "shit" has nothing on "tamade". In a way this reflects the beauty of the Chinese language. Even a word like "motherfucker" has so many meanings that when you say it it loses much of its sting. It's not even the most offensive language in English anymore. I think it's been supplanted by "nigger". However, when you say "knn... etc etc" you are still spelling out the meaning of the words.7. National Service This was where I embraced the wonderful cultural diversity of Singapore and learnt swear words in Malay and Tamil.8. UglinessThe world has become more ugly. Perhaps it cannot get as ugly as a, say, communist city, but ghetto culture and hip hop are the order of the day. Why is this so? This has to do with the fast pace of life. There is less time for flowery decorations, for decorum. For the beauty of the language. People want things, they want it now, and they want it fast. The era of great art has passed us by. The gods we pray to, I don't think Venus is one of them. It's all about commercialism, money, etc etc. Aesthetics aren't that important anymore.So that's one reason why we have the rise of undecorous language.9. Punk / postmodernismNow "fuck" is a simple word, but the ideas behind this word are not so simple. When you use a term like "motherfucker" and mean it as a compliment, and worse still, everybody around you knows that it's a compliment, it has certain implications. At its worst, it is moral relativism. But it's also some form of democracy, some form of levelling.Issues such as social stature either have less meaning, or they become extremely complicated. Like who's the master of the class, the teacher, the class bully, or the guy at the back of the class with all the wisecracks? At different points in time, when you ask yourself different questions, or define social stature according to different criteria, the answer is different.Who ever knows? The distortion of the meaning of "motherfucker" is a compelling piece of social commentary. Black is the new white. Bad is the new good. Up is the new down.10. Sex and violence on TV.There are examples of people using foul language, and it's supposed to look really cool. Like Samuel L Jackson on "Snakes on a Plane". It's a bit like smoking, really. Some people disapprove of it, but it's got that cool appeal. Some people come off completely klutzy but others become cultural icons. Suddenly people mimic this behaviour, and what used to be pure fiction becomes a part of the cultural landscape. Then there's this complicated feedback process between what's on TV and what people say and do. Then the TV just has to make people swear more because it's become the reality.11. NuancesThere are certain nuances of meaning that are more succintly conveyed with the use of vulgar language. Take for example the controversial advertisements for Australia tourism. They lay the plates out for you, polish the silver, let you dine outdoors in the brush with a juicy leg of lamb on the stove, and then ask, "where the hell are you?" Now there were plenty of objections, and even I would agree that maybe swearing on an advertisement is not the best thing you should do. But then the slogan got changed to "where are you". Now this is even worse than the original. "Where the hell are you?" has this connotation: why aren't you visiting Australia. A more accurate translation would be "why aren't you coming over?" But with "where are you?" this meaning is completely lost.When somebody says, "what are you doing?" it is definitely not the same as "what the fuck are you doing?" Because the f word denotes that it is the speaker's opinion that there's something seriously wrong with what's currently being done. And even if you say, "you're doing something wrong" another connotation is lost. The word fuck exemplifies the shock of your realising that something has gone dreadfully wrong. It compresses a large amount of realisation into a very small space. It is embodied in the Buddhist principle of sudden realisation. This is why both fuck and fo begin with the letter f. Ministerial salaries I'm wondering what to say about our ministerial salaries. Is it right that our ministers are paid $1M every year? I don't know.People are up in arms. Life is not fair. Why do we have the most highly paid civil service in the world?Let's talk about the arguments, both for and against, and assess them properly.1. Senior civil servants do not need to be paid that much because they do not work in organisations that make money. In a way that is true when you look at it from an accounting standpoint alone. Whatever you do, you take a cut of it. If you're earning big bucks, you take a cut of it, becuase the impact to the bottom line is not that great.However first this direct approach of measuring the worth of a person solely on his economic contribution to his organisation raises a few questions. If you are working for social services and health, surely your contribution is more important than just $$$. But because you are not making a lot of $$$, does it mean that that work is not valued much? For articulating environmental policy, that is not really tangible in $$$, although you are making the world a safer place for your grandchildren, assuming the world is not coming to an end by the time they grow up.While your contribution is not measurable in $$$, unfortunately your sole renumeration would have to be $$$.The other aspect is that governments may not be raking in $$$, but they can have a big influence on the country's economic performance. We know that the Great Depression is more a result of really really bad economic policies, rather than that people working in firms everywhere was lazy. If governments get a lot of blame when economic policies don't work, they should also get a lot of credit when they do. Otherwise it's not fair.2. Top people should be paid top salaries in order to make our government a better oneFirst off, our government is not made only of top people. Sorry to disappoint the cabinet ministers, but people at entry level also make a difference too. Why aren't they paid well?If a system where the path to the top is not always based on merit, or based on a questionable form of merit (scholarship system), then what do high salaries have anything to do with attracting talent? Isn't this more of a method of enriching a few elites who already have privileged access to the upper echelons of the civil service, rather than casting your net far and wide for civil service talent?The other thing is the assumption that you can buy the best people with the highest salaries. Is that true? Maybe up to a certain point. But the correlation between performance and salary has always been weak. It's only if you combine the salary incentive with a system of widening your net, that this incentive scheme will work. Otherwise it'd be most obviously a system of people benefitting their own kind.3. Corporations pay their top people top dollar tooWhat is the basis of pegging the salaries to big earners in corporations? Do heads roll when they don't perform? Not always. It's only when the system works. Like there is an enlightened board who are not under the thrall of the CEO (case in point: NKF), or when there is an action by the shareholders to make sure that the board and the senior management aren't in active collusion to skim away the takings of the company, legitimately, since you can basically name whatever the fuck you want as your salary.It's a terribly distorted market, because the systems that rein in how much people are paid in corporations don't work very well. In the end, because of market forces, even hitherto honest companies have to raise their senior executives' salaries to match the "market", which is, truth be told, a pretty fucked up market.We are all told in economics that salary renumeration is rational because there is a market (which approximates to the "perfect competition" we all read about in la la land and economic textbooks) which really pays people what it's worth. This is not true. For people who are aggressive alpha male go getters, there is the big cock effect, where you will demand more money than you need, more money than you'd be comfortable with, not because you need to upkeep a nice lifestyle, not because you need all that money for anything (after all you're working so hard, how on earth are you going to enjoy all that money?) but because you want to show that you're earning more than some particular other person. That is why, after a certain amount of money is being made, people go into philantropy. Philantropy is, after all, just another outlet for these sort of people to satisfy their competitive instincts. After all, binging and purging are merely 2 facets of the same coin.If you want to align the ideals of the higher echelon of government to the corporate world, you are aligning it downwards, not upwards.4. Paying the top people top dollar is a waste of governments' money.Not entirely true. To a certain extent, it is possible that paying people a lot of money can prevent a lot of corruption and pork barrel politics from taking place. And also a way of maintaining the incorruptibility of civil servants. This can save the government a lot of money.What are 2 big reasons for the Iraq war? You think that Cheney didn't take into consideration how the war would enrich Halliaburton? Why does the US military have so manytoys it doesn't need?If these abuses can take place in such a so-called "open" country like the United States, wouldn't you think that things would be worse in Singapore? We all like to talk about openness, freedom and democracy, but it's not that effective when a few disparate activists and NGOs go around bitching about all these under the table deals. They can't affect policy, they can't do a damn thing. The only realistic option is for a government to police itself.Then again, you might go back for reservist training and notice that the SAF has gotten rather top heavy with a disordinate number of colonels and generals walking around with nothing better to do, not really willing or able to leave the organisation because they can't find a real market for their talents. Even if all these people are smart, capable people, does the civil service really need all of them? How much are people paying to keep all these deadweight? How are you going to explain to the young and ambitious people in the civil service that you can't raise their salaries to the superscale?5. We have a world class civil serviceWhile it may be true that our government is more effective than most other governments in implementing their policies, is that indicative that we have a superior civil service, or is that an indication that our people are basically in thrall to the government and is willing to follow whatever we do?Put it this way, if a city is crime free, the police force does not have to be very good.The other thing is: we're a small country. Why does the PM of a small country need to be much more capable than the PM of a large country? You could say that we have a lot of vulnerabilities, given our precarious situation: multi racial, Chinese island in a Malay sea, very easy to go wrong. But is that really true? Are tiny nation states necessarily more vulnerable? The Venetian state lasted more than 1000 years! D6. We are the only country who pays that much to our executives.Probably. But look at the Queen of England. An essentially parasitical existence, since she's not an executive. Surely she gets more than $2M a year. Of course, comparing these salaries to royalty is a completely different thing. It's not as though we should aspire towards this situation.What do I think? I think that the top civil servants should be paid well. But they are already being paid well, so this recent increase was completely unnecessarily. I don't have a problem with them earning $1M a year, but I definitely have a problem with them saying that $1M is not enough.I think that the increases should be across the board, that the salaries of the rank and file should get more of the increase. They should publish the ratio of the top executive to the entry level. In corporations, this is an outrageous amount, and there's no reason why the civil service have to reflect such inequities. Music scene I came across this article on a talent show, where not only the performers and songwriters are appraised, but also the whole marketing and managing team and executives behind them. I think well, at least Joe Strummer is dead and he doesn't have to see this, but maybe he's turning in his grave. For me this is just plain awful.You notice how when 20-something girls are at their most beautiful, they are also at their most haughty and arrogant, and suddenly by the time they're 40, they turn into desperate housewives. And so it is with the music industry. It's a dying industry, at least for the major labels, and all this American Idol shit is just reflective of how the media's given up on good ideas, given up on music quality, letting their audiences do their talking and thinking for them.You have to wonder why there's this constant divide between commercial appeal and critical appeal. When you read books like "Tipping Point" or "Wisdom of Crowds", you'll understand that a big part of the reason why such and such a song is a hit and not another song, is accident. Why it's so important that a song has to gain the critical mass needed in order for it to be a hit. Whereas whether it's a good song or not, is something that's more intrinsic about the song itself. It either has good quality, or it doesn't. Even for people who were ignored by their contemporary audiences, like Nick Drake, Big Star and Velvet Underground, they will eventually be recognised because the quality is there. If Nick Drake hadn't died, he'd be rich and famous today. Now how incongruous is that?I still remember this brief time when Nirvana managed to turn the whole music industry upside down. It was a glorious moment, when a lot of good music that had been bubbling under suddenly got unleashed upon the world. A lot of bands that were really good, who had been plying their trade for many years without being recognised came up at the same time. Suddenly the whole world knew about people like the Pixies, the Smashing Pumpkins, Husker Du, Massive Attack, Teenage Fanclub, REM, Sonic Youth, The Fall, Meat Puppets, Happy Mondays, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Sundays, Stone Roses. It was a hundred flowers blooming, like the Cambrian explosion.But you'd see this pattern emerging: 1. There is a punk movement, and a lot of bands who deserve to be well known suddenly make it big. 2. Music industry gets caught with their pants down, and as is typical behaviour, scrambles around for the next big thing. 3. Lots of hacks, a few of them really talented, but mostly talentless opportunists jump onto the bandwagon and fuck around. 4. Meanwhile, newly famous bands from point 1 are badly equipped to handle fame and fortune, and some, like Kurt Cobain, screw it up really really badly. 5. Scene implodes owing to either their audience moving on, or talentless opportunists from point 3 screwing up the quality of the music, or noveau riche from point 4 screwing up the fame and fortune part. For more details, read "Last Party" by John Harris. So it all ended with the gunshot that killed Kurt Cobain*. Suddenly people who can't sing like Britney Spears come along and the music scene is back in NKOTB mode.I've been watching long enough to see what it is like for Michael Jackson to be an upstart. By now he's worshipped like a God. He used to be worshipped like an idol, and people were saying, "he's good, cool, flashy footsteps and nifty music. But the Beatles were better." Now he's joined the pantheon of the Gods, for no other reason than because he was famous 20 years ago. I've had to raise my eyebrows before when people said, for the first time, that the Smiths were one of the greatest English bands alongside the Beatles. Nowadays, a great number would agree with that. Remember when ABBA was just a cheesy disco outfit? Now they're called pop geniuses, like they were Mozart or something. Remember when people derided T-Rex for having a terribly short but phenomenal period of stardom? Now every wannabe who wants to be famous has to study their tricks.What I'm a little aghast at, though, is the amount of respect accorded to some system where people sing in front of some panel of judges, and they just pontificate about what the guy is supposed to do. (For the record, Paula Abdul was for a short time a teenage idol much like Britney Spears now is. She had some good songs and was a nifty dancer but her singing was shit. This, by the way, is the consensus.) I think that's totally wrong. The best kind of performer is the one who figures out the best way to perform, comes up with something totally new, and then lets the audience catch up with it 20 years later. The second best kind of performer is the one who listens to his audience and catches up with his audience. After that, comes the performer, who needs a third party to tell him what he (the third party) thinks the audience wants to hear. And after that, is the performer who needs a third party to tell both him and the audience what the audience wants to hear. In other words, the judge tells the performer what what he thinks the audience wants to hear, and at the same time he's telling the audience what the audience is supposed to want to hear. This is a fourth rate performer, worse than the third rate because he's performing for a dumb audience who needs to be told what sort of a performer to look out for. Last of all is the performer who can't perform.We thought that the 80s were a bad decade for music, because that's when music started getting really really commercialised. It was the decade when image started overruling the quality of the music, and must have come as a nasty shock to a lot of people. Turns out that it was just a mild taste of things to come. Suddenly, inexplicably, a lot of the hits from the 80s are now considered "classics", even dubious ones like "You turn me around like a record baby". And this is why: people don't write their own music anymore. Nowadays fame is so fleeting and comes to such a small number of people in the scene that you practically have to whore yourself to get noticed. Don't come up with your own stuff, do covers. Janet Jackson used to be able to tell people something original about "What Have You Done For Me Lately". After that it's all ill disguised covers of Sly + Family Stone, or Joni Mitchell, or even more ludicrous, Satie. Even Eminem has to cover "Dream On" by Aerosmith. American Idols must sing covers, even though that decision is admittedly practical: it's easier to judge a person who sings a song that everybody knows.Maybe it's because I haven't really stayed in touch with the music scene, that I only know about the most commercial stuff (which is inevitably the most disappointing.) Maybe I would find a lot of creative stuff bubbling under that I don't know about. But a lot of what's happened recently makes me pine for the 90s.** I could easily have written instead, "Kurt Cobain's suidide", except conspiracy theories abound that it wasn't a suicide. Fashionable nonsense Reading this book - Fashionable Nonsense, written by 2 scientists who feel completely appalled that many postmodernists abuse many references to maths and science. One of them wrote a parody of postmodernists misusing scientific concepts, and turned out a paper full of junk, and submitted it to a postmodernist magazine. What do you know? It got published.In a way I never really got into studying the Humanities in my college. For all my claims towards having a broad and well balanced education, I didn't do a lot of humans stuff, only social science. And even that was a little disappointing because people there didn't have the guts to teach us anything much more than the constructivist approach. This means that you basically "see through" everything on the surface, and then you find that all these meanings are man- made, and either not to be taken seriously, or it could just as well could have been otherwise. I think that these are very good caveats to have, very good analytical tools. I think these ideas allude to the ability of people to invent new meanings to things, and I like this because I like the idea of freedom.At the same time I'm also quite concerned that people take this postmodernism / constructivism thing too far, and go on to say that basically things don't have meanings. I don't like that. There was this book I had to read which repudiated the idea that Asian Americans do better academically because their parents are more likely to tell them to study hard. This is definitely untrue.At the same time I believe that there is a limited application for ideas. I don't really believe that ideas are entities unto themselves, like Plato does. I don't believe that there is an ideal "chair" out there which is somehow more real than something that you sit on. I just think of ideas as abstractions. And an abstraction is a tool, a memory aid, a sketch. That's all. People who use them as crutches, I sometimes sympatise with them because I do that too. But that's all, it doesn't amount to respect. An idea can give you clues as to what the real thing is about, but there's still a gap between that and practice.One of the paradoxes of postmodernism is that while it tends to be a repudiation of the importance of ideas, it dresses itself up in nothing but ideas. Perhaps it stresses the primacy of the idea, that ideas shape reality to such a large extent that you could say something and make it true. That simply by getting people to see things differently you would be able to change the concrete reality.I am a little wary about going into fields of study which base itself on interpreting texts, or works of art, where it is not easy to show whether a person is right or wrong. Then it could end up as a competition to see who's the best at arguing, and not who's right. I've been in discussions where people can be very articulate about being wrong, so much so that it actually scares me. I will not begrudge the fact that a lot of academia follows fashion. We are all humans and some things are always "in" and others "out". But the extent to which academic trends are based on what sounds fashionable, the extent to which people listen or not listen to your ideas based on how trendy and chic they sound, it matters.At least with science and engineering, you got results to back you up, even though there is the occasional holy war. All fields of study are fuckable, but some are more fuckable than others.Like I can read about how Lacan tried to smoke people by comparing mental states with the topological classification of manifolds. (This mental disorder is a torus, that one is a sphere... I know, it's that stupid.) It's hilarious reading that shit, and you know for sure it's wrong. I wonder if he knows that he's venturing into an area with a smaller scope for smokability than his own field. And how he thinks he can talk about compact sets while offering a highly distorted definition*. I'm glad that somebody wrote that book, because higher mathematics ain't nothin' to f wit.Reminds me of somebody who used to ask me questions about some maths theories. I might explain things to her, but then I'd shudder to think about how the concept would be used.This tells you something about higher maths. It's very hip to be able to drop names of theorems and funky concepts. The ideas are very aesthetically appealing. It's very nice to think of yourself as being able to understand all that stuff. In fact I wouldn't have done higher maths if the ideas didn't sound so cool. Unfortunately the scope of application of higher maths is rather limited. The ideas are elegant but we live in a messy world. Why is something simply more "true" just because you can use fancy Maths to show it? A lot of people will buy it, but I'm no longer one of them. Even if the precision and rigour, the scope for fucking around is simply too much. If your axioms are wrong, then everything is wrong.* A set is compact if, for any cover of that set made up of open sets, there is a subset of that cover which also covers the set. In other words, you can always guarantee the existence of an open cover with a finite number of sets, this makes it easy to prove certain properties on that compact set. In real Euclidean space, any set which is closed and bounded is also compact. Ascension I must have mentioned so many times before that I'm going to close this blog down, but never got down to doing it. And short of actually physically deleting this blog, I don't see how that's going to happen. Well, folks, don't worry about this blog being deleted. It's not going to happen.Not within the next 2 weeks anyway.The reason this blog arose was part of the malaise I had. In a way I never really got accustomed to leaving school. I never really moved on from my old existence of obeying rules. All my life, it's been a one track mind. Get that piece of paper. Or if you're in the army obey instructions. If you want to slack off don't get caught. If you want something of your own, reach out and grab it, so long as you don't have to veer off your straight and narrow path to do so. Never much thinking for myself.I discovered while in the uni (but I'm sure that there are people out there who would disagree with me) that I'd be best being a researcher, pursuing what I wanted to pursue, with the freedom to go around doing only what I wanted to do. And, this is most important: not really caring if what I did would have value to other people. I think that is one common conception of what freedom is about.It did rankle a lot with me that I didn't get to pursue this much further when I came back. But I think eventually when you're more settled you always think that it's so much easier to take things as they come. A lot of the problems in the beginning were about not really understanding a lot of things: why did people do things a certain way and not another way? Why did they value quantity over quality? Why don't people think that a contemplative life is worth leading at all? Why do people think that if you're not 100% committed to $$$ then there's something morally suspect about you? Why do people think that learning history is a frivolous enterprise?And some problems with friends and family too: without further elaborating, let's say that certain people think there are more important things than being happy and living in harmony.Anyway my blog was some way of recording down a lot of my thinking, a lot of my ideas, some synthesis I got from reading (and I still do an awful lot of that.) Making things clearer, making the whole picture more coherent.In the Hotel California, some people dance to remember and others dance to forget. I blog to forget. What I learnt from my stochastic processes classes (such elegant, beautiful, ultimately useless maths) was this special exponential / geometric / Markov distribution, which had this "memory-less" property. It struck me that I could be "memory-less". You wake up every morning and the whole world begins anew, as though yesterday never happened. You may not be getting anywhere in your life, but at least you are always young. Sorda.I record things down so that I wouldn't have to think about it. I empty my thoughts out on paper so that more new thoughts can go into my head. Maybe I will look back upon this record and some new things will strike me. Maybe I will never read what I've written again.Sometimes these dynamics have a life of their own. I often find, after a while that I will punch in a few sentences about a topic, and in order to finish writing about that, I'll have to spend another 1/ 2 hrs tediously typing every thread of logic to its conclusion. It's not fun, it's time consuming. The only fun part was finding that idea in the first place. Too many hours of joyless exposition is not good for the health.Many people who know me would see me as being sloppy in many regards, and I guess I am. But when it comes to following through with an idea, I am not sloppy. I am not sloppy with logical rigour, I am not sloppy when I demand from myself new original ideas all the time. I try very hard not to tell the same joke twice. Perhaps never to say the same thing twice, which is why I find myself very very quickly running out of things to say to people. But still...Then the other problem with pursuing knowledge for its own sake is that you're really never sure where it all fits in in the grand scheme of things. If you're running a business, at least you know that in terms of practical solid reality, you're always involved in the lives of others, even if in some oblique way. It's almost like you didn't have to worry about this as an academic, so long as the funds keep coming your way, you could publish and publish and publish, who'd read? Only such a small percentage of work has any bearing on other peoples' real lives. That's something I've come to realise over the course of working in a corporation. So is it better to be a cog in a machine that is doing something, or to be an autonomous entity unto yourself, whose participation in the grand scheme of things is suspect?Another thing is, I've come to realise that that nagging sense of unease that I've experienced throughout my undergraduate years comes about because I lack that mental security that I am doing something that's "real". I could say, "yes, this sounds impressive". I could say, "what an original, non-trivial, penetrating insight". But in the grand scheme of things, how have you benefitted your brother in a concrete fashion?So we set into motion a process, whereby whatever this blog stood for: my intellectual pursuits, hours of refining a train of thought, perhaps even my self imposed isolation. Like Woody Allen said in one of his films, a relationiship is like a shark, it needs to constantly keep swimming otherwise it will not get the oxygen it needs. And we need to be moving on. And maybe I've also seen too many people come and go at work to think I haven't been sitting still for too long.Oh, I've mentioned to one of you that the quality of the blog inevitably declines over time. (But of course I said it in a more direct way than that.) So am I superimposing my values over yours? That just because my blog has outlived its purpose than yours will inevitably do so. Maybe, I hope not, because that wouldn't be very nice. But it's getting tiresome to keep writing and I can imagine that it's tiresome to keep reading. Iraq Iraq. The popular wisdom about Iraq is that it was a completely unnecessary war, fought only for oil. The WMD was only an excuse. The reconstruction was badly handled.For me, after I've read Niall Ferguson's "Colossus", I will only agree with the third statement. I will think that the war was in some way necessary, even if it's not for the reasons that the average American will agree with. Saddam had to go. Yes, the US fought an amazing 3 major conflicts (Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq) in the space of 5 years. But they were "leftover" incidents. The Balkans problem had been around since 91/ 92. The Taliban had been around since 1995. Iraq was an unsolved problem since 1991. Is it wrong to clear up shit that other people have left behind for you?There are reasons why intervention in Iraq was necessary. Saddam had to go. The sanctions were not working and instead of encouraging the citizens to rise up against Saddam, they strengthened his hand because all the foreign aid had to go through him. He was a threat to security. Yes, there was the prospect of oil, but in the large scheme of things Iraq is very important strategically and you had to do something about it if the Middle East was going to progress and prosper.There was the temptation that if a successful rebuilding of Iraq took place, Iraq could be a lynchpin for liberal democracy, and help foster this in the Middle East, just as Japan and Germany were to be for East Asia and Europe respectively. Of course it's going to be much tougher for Iraq to function as a democracy than Japan or Germany. Japan and Germany had been prosperous and industrialised states, even at the time of the war. While Iraq was relatively rich just before the Iran Iraq war, it wasn't a "capable" nation in the sense that Japan and Germany was. Germany and Japan only needed to look back at their pre-militism past in order to remember how to build a strong nation. Iraq only had Saddam Hussein to hold the nation together, and after he's gone, the Iraqis don't have a strong sense of nationhood. In reality, Iraq is 3 parties: the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shi'ites. One wonders if it will ever be partitioned, if it will collapse into a long period of civil war.You only have to look at Indonesia, the Congo, the former Yugoslavia and the former USSR to know that states, after the collapse of a strong dictator will struggle to hold themselves together.Ferguson's argument is that the reconstruction of Iraq is possible after a long and sustained period in the country. For example the US stuck around in Japan and Germany for around 10 years.He wrote something very interesting about the military occupations of Germany and Japan. Much has been made of how, in Germany and Japan, the American occupations have been essentially benevolent, in spite of the fact that these were defeated war powers. This fact is often held up as proof of American goodwill. Well guess what? It turns out that they prospered because America screwed up! America didn’t want Germany and Japan’s economies to grow that quickly because they wanted to incapacitate both economies. But it turned out that if these two countries were not allowed to make the quick transition to peacetime prosperity, the occupations of both countries would turn into a gigantic humanitarian aid operation. They were allowed to develop out of expediency, and not because of any humanitarian goodwill.In both countries, many of the people involved in the government were allowed to keep their posts. This was a measure that drew a lot of criticism over the years, but Ferguson argues that it was the right thing to do. A total revolution would have badly disrupted the The reconstruction of both countries has been compared to Iraq. Now one of the big problems is that during the occupation of Iraq, the occupying forces dismissed the entire police and armed forces. I think people now agree that this was a really stupid thing to do, because a large number of the insurgents causing problems in the country are former police and armed forces people.Also reading "Plan of Attack", which is the second of a trilogy of Bob Woodward's reports on George W Bush's administration going to war. Interesting titbits: (1) General Tommy Franks had just finished a war in Afghanistan when he got wind that they wanted to attack Iraq as well. His first reaction was, "Goddamn. What the fuck are they talking about?" (2) George W Bush attended a briefing in which everybody was served peppermints. He ate his peppermint, and after a while, started eyeing William Cohen's (Clinton's defence secretary) peppermint, and was like, "you want that?" Cohen said no, and Bush ate that one too. (3) The "Pottery Barn" principle for foreign interventions: you break it, you own it.What do I think? I think that although if there were WMD, the case for war would have been very clear cut, there were also very compelling reasons for the war. But I wonder sometimes if they were too greedy. Why couldn't the USA wait for everybody else to join in the war effort, instead of rushing in unilaterally? There are a few possible explanations. One is that the oil that you'd get from Iraq would be paid for in US$, instead of Euros. Thing is, if everybody joined in the war, then a more broad based coalition would have had more legitimacy, and perhaps the Iraqis would have accepted them more easily. It's plain to see that Dick Cheney, with his connections to Halliaburton would have profited immensely from the war effort as well.It could have been everybody's problem, but since the US chose to go it alone it, and it alone is responsible for the big mess now.After reading “Colossus” by Niall Ferguson, a very interesting book, I am beginning to see why the guy has such a reputation for being a contrarian historian. According to his preface, his book has upset a lot of people. First of all, if you want to say that America is a world empire, you aren’t allowed to say that it’s a good thing. Secondly if you agree that America’s extraordinary military and economic superiority in the world is a good thing, you aren’t allowed to call it an empire. Ferguson has done both. He thinks that America is an empire, and that it’s a good thing. And he got a bit of flak for that. I wonder what he thinks about the war now, though. One of his points is an interesting one: only an empire would assume responsibility for Iraq. If you're just a sovereign nation state, you just go about minding your own business, you just sweep the snow from your own doorstep. Most of the time you wouldn't give a damn about Iraq, you'd just assume that it's the US's business. If the US doesn't do anything about Iraq, it's the US's problem. If the US goes it along in Iraq, it's also the US's problem.Oh, today is also the 6th of April, which makes it Rwanda genocide day. Dead book stores If nothing else, remember that a bookstore, in order to be successful, has to be placed in the path of people. I still like bookstores but there are so many ways to get your books.First you could wait until there's a warehouse sale, and it gets advertised in the papers a few weeks beforehand. Or you could go on Yahoo auctions and look for it. Or you could get it a few $$ cheaper at a 2nd hand bookstore. Or you could get it off bookmooch. There are fewer and fewer reasons to get something for full price.1. MPH at Stamford The granddaddy of all dead bookstores. When it closed down I felt like I was witnessing history in the making. It was a little shoddy in the 80s, but they refurbished it, and it opened to great fanfare in 1991. It had a music section, also called "Music Power House". But its location, in a quiet little Armenian Street was always going to count against it, and what more with the central library no longer existing.Had a friend who used to work at Music Power House. Told me it was bleeding money. They used to sell their CDs cheaper than anybody else, and I used to stock up there 10 yrs ago. Of course, that was just before the MP3 which was basically a catastrophe to the CD business.Today, MPH occupies 2 locations not too far away from the Stamford Road building, which is more logical because they are in the path of copious amounts of pedestrian traffic: in Raffles City and in CityLink.2. Times at Plaza SingapuraAnother one of the largest bookstores in Singapore. But it had to go when they refurbished the whole of Plaza Singapura 10 yrs ago. When Plaza Sing opened again, it was there, and smaller. And recently it shrunk some more.3. Times at CentrepointTime was when you could put one of the largest bookstores in Singapore on the 4th floor, and people would still go there. And it wasn't for lack of ambition that the bookshop faltered: a few years ago, it was occupying 2 floors, on the 4th floor and the 6th floor of Centrepoint. Unfortunately people stopped coming, and it had to beat a retreat, first shutting down the 6th floor and returning to its original size of 1 floor, and now it's ceded half of its space again.4. MPH at Junction 8, MPH at Wisma AtriaAt least the Junction 8 store lasted more than 10 years. Maybe it's more difficult selling high end English books in heartland shopping malls. Most of the bookstores in these outlying areas are Popular book stores, which sell Chinese books as well, more stationery, more children's books, assessment books. I think the Junction 8 MPH also closed because the library was opening next door. The MPH at Wisma Atria was on the 4th floor, where Food Republic is now. It's never a good idea to put a bookstore up there, unless it's big enough to draw traffic in its own right.5. WH Smith at NovenaWH Smith wanted to set up shop in Singapore. It opened a whole chain of shops in Changi Airport, and in Novena square. Good attempt, I thought. But Times bought over their Changi Airport operations, and WH Smith eventually pulled out of Singapore. Well there's an MPH right next door to where the WH Smith used to be, so it might be possible to support a bookstore there. Or maybe not.6. Word Shop at (gasp) Orchard TowersI think 20 years ago this was a fairly large shop. I don't know what happened to it. As usual it doesn't pay to be in an ulu place, where there aren't enough sober customers to buy what you're selling.7. Page One at Marina CentreThis was a real quirky store. The one in Marina Centre closed down, but they have a large store in Vivocity. Which is nice, they still have all those slanted shelves. Also they seem to have understood (as MPH and Times have not) that a good bookstore needs to have a critical mass in order to attract people there. The slanted shelves are still there.But there is a big problem with the store. Some of the shelves face the window, and you should never expose your books to the sun. Well, hope they can sell their books quickly then.8. Kinokuniya at Wisma AtriaThis is alright, I think they moved next door to Taka, became a very very big store, and is doing really well. I don't know about the Liang Court branch though. But maybe a great place for people to meet on Saturday night before they go chionging at MOS.9. Times at Toa Payoh, Serangoon GardensTime was when you could still stock up a small bookshop in the middle of the wilderness. But I think it doesn't make sense anymore. A good newsstand can stock more magazines than you, and you can't beat a large bookstore for variety: not much reason why anybody would buy a book from you.10. Tower Books.There is still a Tower books, and it's at their store in Suntec. I think the Tower model of a music superstore doesn't quite work anymore. They were for a brief time the largest music store in Singapore. It was a catchword for a lot of hip and trendy stuff. But they had such a large range of inventory they probably didn't know how to manage it well, and also probably made the mistake of bringing in things that people aren't going to buy. (But that's OK, since you are a chain, you can always ship the stuff elsewhere.) It used to be that music retail was about stocking up a really wide range of CDs, nowadays people are careful to only bring in bestsellers and value for money propositions.Borders and Kinokuniya have changed the equation completely. As has NLB. People are much more demanding about what they want from a bookstore. It used to be that people were saying 15 years ago that you could never get any decent books at the bookstore (I remember my first impression of London when I went there 15 years ago was how incredibly well stocked their bookstores were.) But that's no longer true. Thank You for Smoking Movie binge recently. I was maybe bored with my books? Movies just don't take up that much of your time."Thank You for Smoking". I have rather mixed feelings about cigarettes. I remember going on a trip of the US, and we hired a tour guide who brought us around, and we got to the subject of cigarettes, and I, probably I was 12 and fairly brainwashed by government propaganda at that time, I said that they should put all the smokers on an island so we don't have to breathe in their second hand smoke. Then not long after she let out that she was a smoker. I regretted what I said.(smoking)I think while we want to cut down on smoking, it's really quite harsh to sequester people into yellow boxes. People should be allowed to smoke in the open air. Recently they have this campaign to limit the number of places where you can light up to an absolute minimum, where each restaurant has only like 2 tables for smokers, I think that's like going to give them a persecution complex. I used to hate the smell of tobacco, but after getting more exposed to them while in NS I don't have that many objections to them. I wouldn't touch that stuff but live and let live.About pictures of lung cancer and throat cancer on packets of cigarettes, I got to admit that it's a little heavy handed. People smoke to have fun, and you're spoiling their fun. (But I guess that's how it's effective.) I guess things can get a little miserable for the people with their addictions and you get reminded that you will die horribly one day, but you still got to have a puff.But then I have some objections to smoking. You probably have seen, maybe on Seinfeld, some ambitious climbers who smoke a lot in order to be pal-ly with the boss. That's a little strange, I wouldn't ruin my health in order to be pal-ly with the boss. If it happens, it just happens. If it happens in the Army... I mean these people are supposed to be the epitome of physical fitness, and if they smoke, if you got to smoke in the SAF to get ahead, I do think it's pretty screwed up.I wouldn't ever take up smoking. I have an addictive personality and I know it. It's just as well I don't get high on alcohol, or at least I don't find being drunk fun.(living fast)I used to watch my diet carefully. Used to eat a lot of yong tao foo, fishball noodles, econ rice and the like, but recently have thrown caution to the winds. Now it's laksa, bryani, prata. You wonder why Indians, especially those older one, usually end up so fat. Why Korean chicks have such good skin? Because they alway eat brown rice or unpolished rice, and all that fibre is busy at work scraping all the toxins into their shit. And that's the funny thing about eating both peranakan and teochew stuff at the dining table. Teochew women are usually among the best looking Chinese in Singapore, because of the good two shoes diet they have : steamed fish, porridge, braised pork, tau pok. Then there's the sinful peranakan stuff: ladies fingers with dollops of sambal, ayam buak keluak, assam fish. The saint and the sinner.I guess what I'm saying is that I'm 30 and worried if I'm ever going to balloon in my middle aged years. I don't think so but you never know. I go out and eat all sorts of nonsense: KFC. Murtabak. Hor fun. I rationalise to myself that I burn it all up during my 2 hours of exercise every week but not always true, and dangerous to tell these things to yourself.What I'm trying to get at is the tension between being young and thinking that you can do whatever shit you want, and getting older when you realise that you got to watch your ass whatever you do. Like smoking, when you're young, it's really glamorous. Then when you're middle aged all the damage starts showing. Like when they kidnapped the lobbyist in the show and slapped 200 nicotine patches on him and he had to be hospitalised and get so near to death....I actually want to distinguish between death and decay. Death means that everybody has to go someday, and if I were, at 80 years old be fit and healthy still up and about, my body not wasting away, or diseased, and suddenly I get an anvil dropped on my head, or die in a car crash (quickly, mind), or in my sleep, it doesn't bother me at all. What's more terrible, though, is the decay of the body. If you were to lose an arm when you're 50, eyesight half gone by 55, having difficulty walking by 60, had hip replacement by 65, I think that's a bad way to live. I don't personally fear death, but it's the wasting away that's terrible that I can do without.I don't really care about inviting death, but I don't want the decay. Maybe that will motivate me to get more fit. I haven't even gone for lasic because I'm scared of the risk of going blind when I'm old. That'd be terrible.(thank you for smoking)Tobacco lobbying in the US is a nasty piece of work. I haven't watched "The Insider" yet but the guy who has to worry about being killed because he leaked internal memos about tobacco research to the press? Damn. I guess I wouldn't be so sympathetic towards big tobacco in the States becuase they got too much muscle to laugh at. (And by the way I feel for the small guy puffing away on the cigarette but really couldn't give a fuck about all those big companies.) There's this book sitting on my shelf, "Ashes to Ashes", a Pulitzer prize winning account of the amazing stranglehold big tobacco has on the US, and I will read it some day but not soon because I'm getting a little tired of doing nothing but reading books. (By the way one of my shelves gave way today - too many books. Think I'll shore it up with some steel plate reinforcements. )Katie Holmes is hot. No wonder that lobbyist wanted to fuck her. I'd want to too but Tom Cruise already got her. No wonder she gets Tom Cruise. But of course a lot of people are going to hate her for that, or otherwise it smacks of being too careerist. And naturally tongues are going to be wagging about how he gets some young starlet with not that many movies under her belt. (Maybe it's that other stuff under the belt that's more important.) Maybe I'll go watch her other movies. But I don't like Christian Bale.Some reviews of the movie have criticised the movie for portraying the lobbyist as a sympathetic character but I'm alright with that. I think it's OK to humanise humans. That way you can see why seemingly normal, sensible, ordinary human beings can devote their lives to such horrendous causes. The lobbyist says - what's it all about? It's about paying the mortgage. 99% of all the shit that ppl do is for paying the mortgage. The journalist who used her pussy to squeeze the lobbyist for secrets - how's that - having fun on your job. But how she used such treachery on him (albeit for a good cause, so that's forgivable), that's about paying the mortgage. It's a good touch to see a lobbyist try to explain what he does to the son. That way all his obfucation, all his lawyerly tricks, all his rationalisation and self justification comes to the fore. He's a good performer but his best performances are reserved for his son who still holds him in thrall.And that's the thing that makes him more compelling as the central villian of the piece. He can smooth talk his way around other people because he has a little bit of goodness in him, enough of it can come out for people to like him - they won't be persuaded otherwise. He wouldn't be convincing if he didn't have any decency whatsoever. That's what makes him real, and ironically that's what makes him effective.People are portrayed as weasels here. How the Dilbert cartoonist in all his wisdom portrays the typical office worker: not an angel, nor a devil, but a weasel, somebody capable of both good and bad. A devoted father can be an asshole without a conscience at work. A journalist with the righteous intention to expose the machinations of the tobacco lobby resorts to offering sex to dull her victim's alertness. It gets into the heart of what's going on, why evil happens. Evil is a pattern of the alignment of peoples' interests with each other. If they are set up against each other then evil results. The system affects peoples' behaviour. (Which is not to say that people can't opt out of the system - they choose not to.)Other film watched was "Broken Flowers". Not much to say but I'd recommend it.Oh, and England failed to beat Israel. I wonder who the next England coach is going to be. Work that stick baby It's a harebrained scheme, but I guess I had to do it anyway. I started driving a manual car for myself without the supervision of anybody. The manual car was there, so I went to drive it. Before I started, I only knew 2 things: first, you have to depress the clutch when you're changing gears. Second, and this was told to me by a cousin, when you're changing gear, you have to release the clutch and step on the gas at the same time.My introduction to manual transmission was a very rough one. I had no idea: was so used to automatic where I would just keep 1 foot on the brake no matter what. In my first 20 minutes in the car, I must have heard the gnashing of gear teeth, engine brought to a violent standstill, stalling in the middle of the carpark (thank god for car parks!) around 20 times. I was truly learning from the school of hard knocks. I hardly knew how to get out of the parking lot at first. I would depress some wrong combination of pedals, and the car would jerk forward and come to a violent stop. I was truly concerned about doing something terrible to the engine. In fact, within 5 minutes, I had the car lurching forward in spasmodic jerks that were so violent the radio popped out of the socket. Everything that was on the passenger seat was on the floor. I was really sweating.I would probably have killed somebody if I managed to get the engine out of first gear. But luckily that's not possible. Even if I drove headlong against the wall it would probably cause more than a minor dent. But I was panicking because I didn't know what I was doing.Worse was to follow when I tried the clutch accelerate thing on my reverse. I didn't understand why it was so hard to get right. A hiccup, a lurch, but never managed to get the reverse right. (I found out later that I didn't have to use the brake. The clutch was the brake for reverse and 1st gear. But because I didn't know this at first, I panicked because I realised that I wasn't going to be able to park the car. By now I was driving circles around the top levels of the multistorey car park. In the end, my car came to a complete standstill in the middle of the parking lot, half way it. I didn't know what to do. So I set the gear to neutral, turned off the engine, and pushed the car all the way in.After that, I drove the auto car to McDonalds', thinking "thank God for auto transmission. That's the difference between my being alive or dead by now. I guess if you only know auto, you don't really know how to drive. There's a machine somewhere doing half your driving for you.Sat there for half an hour, drinking iced lemon tea and reading Karen Armstrong's book on fundamentalism. And drove back. A cursory inspection of the car revealed a new mark on the car, to my dismay. I hope that I can explain that away as something that was there before I lay my hands on that car. Or maybe not.Well I wasn't that happy about failing in my first attempt to drive a manual, so after I was back home I took out the manual again, and this time I learnt that when you switched from standstill to first gear, there's no need to use the accelerator, because it only makes things more complicated. That was a stunning revelation. OK, at least now I can make the car start moving without destroying the gearbox. Was able to reverse park the car properly. Wow, that was a big relief. But of course, some vestige of the trauma of the spasmodic jerking and engine dying was still there. I still had the jitters when I walked away from the car: I felt like I was walking away from a car wreck.I'm driving the auto to work tomorrow. I wonder if I can pull myself together, forget about the traumatic experience with the manual and concentrate on the driving.Edit: a few days later: I have successfully driven to work. Unfortunately some motherfucker ran his motherfucking key down the side of my car. The problem is that when you're having a fancy car people think that you're some kind of boss or something. To be a peon, and at the same time get your car scratched by some motherfucker, is like a double whammy.Edit 2: 2 people have separately come up to me and recommended that somebody who knows manual sits next to me and teaches me what is going on. That's a little bit too late. I've figured out most things through trial and error. I'm going to do the safe thing and drive at night.My father hardly scolds me for anything these days but I've left 2 scratch marks on his car. (It's a big car and it's hard to manoeuvre, so I've scraped the bumper against the wall or a car a few times). And he blasted me for my damned incompetence. One of these ppl (my sis) told me that it reminded her of this incident when I was a kid and I got caned for tearing away at the wallpaper. Not very flattering but funny.Well he came back and his reaction now was one of resignation, "we'll do a paint job after we know that you won't be so stupid to scrape the side of the car against the wall anymore." Anyway he probably doesn't want to get angry that much because he's contracted the dreaded Legionnaire's disease.I also found out that the scratch on the side of the car was already there before the holiday. Which means that it wasn't ppl from my company who did it, which is a great great relief. I wouldn't want to think of them in that way. England national team England national team in deep shit again. The post of the England national coach is as cursed as the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher post at Hogwarts. No wonder they got to pay ppl millions of pounds each year to take it.Sven-Goran Erection is actually a decent coach. Somebody pointed out that nobody in Europe has matched his record of getting to 3 consecutive quarter finals in major tournaments. (But you know, in 2002 a lot of big names fell at the first hurdle.) He has a very good record in qualifiers, the occasional howler against Northern Ireland aside. Yes, the problem with England is that they don't have good coaches, because in the rare occasions they get qualified coaches, (Ramsey, Robson, Venables) they have generally done well. If England had Hiddink or Scolari they wouldn't be in the mess they are in today.But they cannot attract top talent to the England national team coach role, because it is an extraordinarily high pressure job. The media and the paparazzi are incredibly intrusive into your private life. Granted, in other nations like Spain, France and Italy the national coach role is extremely pressurising, but I think they don't intrude into your private life. They hurl all manner of insults at you if you lose, but you don't get your profile splashed all over the papersAnother thing is the talent system. They had a great youth system, but mainly from West Ham (Ferdinand, Carrick, Defoe, Cole, Lampard) and Man U (Beckham, Scholes, the Nevilles, Butt). Who's going to contribute to the next generation of players? In the top 4 teams, you have mainly foreigners up and coming. Thing is, you have top ppl from Spain (Fabregas, Alonso), France (Henry, Makalele), Portugal (Ronaldo) playing for you but then, Owen Hargreaves aside, English players don't prosper outside of England.The other big minus against the England team is the lack of coaching talent. The top 4 are manned by foreigners. (Ferguson is Scottish and will never coach the England team.) Think about all the names that have been put forward as potential England coaches. McLaren at least guided a team to a UEFA cup final, even though it was more through sheer luck than anything else. Stuart Pearce is barely holding on to a job. Peter Taylor is in his rightful place in a lower division team. That leaves Allardyce. Perhaps Steve Coppell will come on board 1 day. Alan Pardew is too controversial, Alan Curbishley will get relegated. And let's hope that Martin O'Neill will come good.Problem is that England coaches don't make it big outside England, in the same way that Wenger has come to England and become a top coach. England players don't make it big outside England either.Putting Venables in as your assistant is perhaps the kiss of death, and Bryan Robson can testify to that. Venables was a good coach in 1996, but has he done anything decent since then? (Other than keep Middlesborough from being relegated.)Anyway it isn't as though England have much pedigree. Here are the list of nations who have won the European championships:USSRSpainItalyGermanyCzechoslovakiaFranceNetherlandsDenmarkGreeceEvery major nation has appeared on this list (although you could say that Sweden is a "bigger" football nation than Denmark, or the former Yugoslavia is a bigger nation than Greece.) But England has this ignominous record of never having won this tournament. In fact their best performance was semi-finals. Yes, they were unlucky not to have gotten past Germany in 1996. That was their best chance. There was this incident in extra time when a ball cut across the goalmouth and Gascoigne was straining to reach it. If he did, England would have been in the finals, and you'd probably tip them to beat the Czechs. As it is, it wasn't to be.And then look at the stadiums that were used to host the 1996 European championships: Hillsborough (Sheffield Wednesday have managed the arduous task of getting promoted back to the championship). Elland Road (Leeds are going down to League one). City Ground (Nottingham Forest relegated all those years ago and not looking like coming back anytime soon.) Villa Park (you still think that Martin O'Neill is your messiah?) and St James' Park (Newcastle getting kicked out of the UEFA cup after losing a 2 goal lead).Looking at the sides just outside the top 4 make for strange reading in terms of the historical pedigree of the clubs. OK, Tottenham and Everton were always going to be there. But now a lot of unfamiliar clubs like Reading, Portsmouth, Bolton and Blackburn. The big 4 are always going to be the big 4, but outside of that, it seems, anything goes.Oh, they're offering England gives 4.5 ball to Andorra. I'm not betting on that. I'll put my money on Andorra eating the 4.5 balls.Edit: I was right! England failed to beat Andorra by 5 goals. I mean, seriously, you didn't think it was going to happen, right? DVD-RAM A little bit miffed.Took half days' leave today. There were 2 reasons which were not very good. First I wanted to come back home and record a show on my DVD player for my parents who are in HK this week. Second, I wanted to get some sleep because I slept at 3 am last night. Why is the first reason not very good? Because if I had set up the timer properly last night and slept early last night I would not have had to take leave today. But that's another story.I came home around 4, and had a short nap first. Exhausted, really. (Oh btw I saw this restaurant at Tanjong Pagar Road, Amici, which makes really good stuff. I ate at the Holland V branch before and I thought that the pasta was decent. I had a steak and it's one of the better steaks I've had in recent memory, even though it was "only" a lunch special and in the end the bill was under $20. The other thing is that probably Tanjong Pagar Road is not one of the best places to open a restaurant because it's a low traffic place. I wonder if those guys are aware of that. It looks like a great place to eat, nobody ever goes there so you'll get some privacy, so remember to go check out that place before it closes down. Hey don't give me that what-you-can-spend-$20-having-lunch-alone look. Single men have very few privileges but this is one of them. Oh, and condemned prisoners too.)I woke up at 6. Show was supposed to start at 7. So far so good. I looked around, the manual for the DVD recorder was nowhere to be found. I went apeshit. My parents inhabit the living room, and use it for their workplace, and not surprisingly the whole place is a bloody pigsty. I couldn't find the manual for the DVD. I was cursing my mother for not leaving the manual in a place I could easily find it, which is easily one of the stupidest things she's ever done (although that is nowhere as stupid as giving birth to me.) Finally after turning half the house upside down it suddenly occurred to me that manuals are normally kept hidden in a certain drawer, and there it was.The other thing that got me miffed was that I had bought the wrong recordable discs. I found that out when I was rummaging through the box the DVD player came in in, and I saw something that says, "this DVD player does not use DVD-RW" As though the confusion between DVD-RW and DVD+RW wasn't bad enough. So it seems that I could only record on DVD-RAM and blew $20 on 10 DVD-RW discs for nothing. (Anybody who wants this stuff at a discount pls let me know thanks. Otherwise next time I get a new computer I will get a DVD writer that uses this stuff.)Finally managed to figure out how to tune the VCR channel to channel 8, and get the timer program set up, 15 minutes before the show was set up.That's the nice thing about growing up. For years your parents have criticised you over and over again when you screw up for this or that, and of course it's true that they (at least this is true for my father) have had less to get by on and had a really tough life but it's a perverse sense of relief when you understand how technically incompetent they are, and you could easily knock them back for not knowing how to program a VCR, use Microsoft Office, manage their email, etc etc. A great relief. I needn't have felt bad about them calling me useless way back then.