I mean I want to see

SIN city! Image © here

MAYBE I’ll go on a solitary sampling tour of all the ice-cream brands in the neighbourhood mamak shop. I think Magnum is overpriced and not yummy. I’d rather pay for Haagen Dasz (sp?) green tea ice cream actually, but sometimes it’s fun to just eat trash.

Didn’t sleep enough, as usual, and am self-medicating with sugar! Hey it’s the weekend and I can do exactly as I please, which is to lie around, eat junk food, and snipe. Maybe embark on some hysterical moral panic act. Try to see how I can put my grubby paws on other people’s money. Maybe — argggggg even read something in Bahasa. Sigh. Work! Work! I don’t want to work. We should just sit around on the beach under the coconut tree and eat coconuts and grow fat.

*

YES, I’m feeling snipey today, so let’s jump onto one of my favourite hobby horses, GAMBLING. I’ve some statistics here.

Firstly, from One Hope Centre, which helps gambling addicts and helps them on the path to recovery. (I’m ambivalent about it being a church group, but so far it’s the best non-profit I know of other than Credit Counselling that helps gambling addicts.)

The info below has been collected by an anonymous volunteer:

One Hope Centre support groups are large, numbering anywhere between 30 to 60 participants. Among One Hope clients, 35% are aged 35-44, 35% are aged 45-54, 90% are married, 90% are Chinese (YES, all the stereotypes are TRUE), and 35% are Buddhist. According to Reverend Tan, gamblers think they can control their emotions, and also believe they can control and recoup their losses. Problem gamblers can’t forgive themselves for their losses, and they become detached from society. Each compulsive gambler, according to the group, can also adversely affect the lives of somewhere between 10 and 20 relatives, friends, and business associates around him.

Many people here claim to use gambling for stress relief, leisure or (gasp) “family time”. As an example, Reverend Tan cited an MCYS 2008 survey which revealed that 50% of the respondents viewed gambling as a leisure activity, while another four in 10 undergrad students gamble. In addition, a similar SMU survey found that three youths out of 100 gamble, while the National Council on Problem Gambling reported that calls to their hotline have doubled since Resort World Sentosa opened its doors. When another casino theme-parm opened in April 2010, gamblers started using the excuse of “whole family entertainment” to pay a visit, throwing family members at the theme park and going into the casino themselves. “We are living in a world of gambling,” said the reverend, “and no one is immune from becoming a gambling addict when given the right opportunity.” He quoted Michael Franzsee, noting that “more lives are destroyed by gambling than by drugs and alcohol combined”.

(Note: This can also take the form of STOCK MARKET GAMBLING, or “land banking” or whatever, all you idiots who “invest” without really knowing WTF you’re doing.)

In Singapore, there’s the case of Simon Lee, a problem gambler who killed his family (a wife and two children) in March 2005. In another case, a Singapore businessman lost $6 million and was reduced to driving a taxi for a living. The reverend also pointed out that gamblers often get into heavy debt and borrow from illegal loansharks, who come knocking for payment. When gamblers can’t pay, they often want to kill themselves, thinking that they can then relieve the family of these problems. When callers phone One Hope, they are already at their wit’s end, and One Hope becomes their last hope.

While IMH maintains that gambling is a “problem of the brain” (WAKE UP, doctors!!), Reverend Tan claims it is a “heart problem” — greed. He says that strong family support is the key to recovery for problem gamblers. One Hope views its programme as a “family package treatment”, inviting family members to participate in the gambler’s recovery and restore the broken relationships. Otherwise, given the opportunity, a gambler can easily fall back into addiction.

Credit Counselling Singapore assists consumers in recovering from serious debt problems by providing general credit management information, credit counselling and debt management. While One Hope helps clients with emotional issues and illegal loansharks,
CCS deals strictly with debt management and legal loansharks.
CCS’s typical client is 39 years old, earns $2,700 a month, has about seven creditors, and owes $71,000 in debt. About 66% of clients are married, with 49% holding an A-level cert or above and 46% staying in a five-room flat or larger.
CCS charges $30 for a counselling session and $100 for its Debt Management Programme. These charges, it says, are levied so that the client will not take its services for granted and will be more committed to the programme.

Volunteers from
CCS started counselling debtors in 2005. Clients fall into four categories: a “hard luck” client suffers from an unexpected crisis, such as retrenchment or medical bills. The second category is the “spender”, where a client who earns $3,000 a month can actually spend over $5,000, using the $2,000 from credit lines. Men in this category typically make a few big purchases, such as a house or a car, while women typically make several small purchases that accumulate into big debts. For example, they might argue that it’s cheaper to “buy two, get one free”, which actually leads to more spending (YES: WAKE UP when you read those fancy credit card brochures for cosmetics + other “cute” items!) A third category is “muddle-headed” client, who borrows from the banks to lend the money to friends and family. For example, many people lost jobs last year and borrowed money to start their own companies. As the crisis worsened, many new ventures failed, leaving clients unable to repay their loans. Finally, the fourth category is the “punter” clients, who plays the stock markets or gambles on lotteries, soccer games or horse racing.

For someone to repay $71,000 in debt, the
CCS counsellor said that it would take 26 — yes, 26!!! — years of the client not buying anything to eat or drink. Troubled debtors rarely approach
CCS directly — more often than not, it’s a concerned family member who seeks resolution to the family debt.

With Marina Bay Sands Resorts Casino, the Casino will definitely want to recoup the $7.5 billion (I think) they sank into building this “theme park”. Let’s see where the money actually comes from.

I LOVE FB for moments like these…

So CNN posts this article up on FB and there is A. Barrage. Of. Outraged comments.

Mine: ‎*gasp* How did you know my fantasy is to have four husbands?
A: Sexy Species?? You must not have been in a Walmart lately…seems to me we are a FAT species.
B: FRANCE BABY KILLER LADY DISAGREES
C: about 3% of all mammal species are monogamous. The Wolf is the most popular. (This reminds me of the Wolf tattoo story…)

Looked like it was going to rain…

With dark clouds looming over Ubin

But the sun came out in the end

Bali: Tirta Empul. I love that island so much…

THIS week we revisit one of my favorite shows. As is often the case, I hear Rachel Naomi Remen differently with the passage of time. I’m also struck right now by the title we gave this conversation with her — “Listening Generously.” The longer I do this work, the more aware I am of listening as a discipline and vocation — and something I do with and for all of you. This is a great privilege, and a gift.

And listening to Rachel Naomi Remen is nourishing. She is not a religious figure per se, rather a kind of quiet modern-day mystic. Her wisdom is somewhat countercultural. Living well, she says, is not about eradicating our losses, wounds, and weaknesses. It is about understanding how they continually complete our identity and equip us to help others. As a doctor, she’s seen time and again how even deep pathologies and failures become the source of unsuspected strengths. She believes that however difficult our lives become or how fraught our choices, most of us never lose our capacity to be whole human beings. We may forget that potential in ourselves, yet it can reappear full-blown in times of crisis. The hope that her stories engender is itself a healing experience.

I’ve been ever after changed by her telling of a formative story of hope. On her fourth birthday, her grandfather, an Orthodox rabbi and a student of the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, taught her about “the birthday of the world,” as he called it: In the beginning, the world was made of light. But by some accident, the light was scattered, and it lodged as countless sparks inside every aspect of creation. The highest human calling is to look for this original light from where we sit, to point to it and gather it up and in so doing to repair the world, tikkun olam.

This might sound like an idealistic and fanciful idea. But Rachel Naomi Remen calls it an important and empowering image. It insists that each one of us, flawed and inadequate as we may feel, has exactly what’s needed to help repair the part of the world that we can see and touch. This story is a practical tool — the kind of practical tool religious traditions carry forward in time — for a world longing to address images of suffering that can otherwise overwhelm us.

The following passage from Rachel Naomi Remen’s Kitchen Table Wisdom, which we hear in this show, was written with physicians in mind. But it holds a resonant caution and challenge for all of us, I think, as we struggle to face yet not be overwhelmed or numbed by the pain and suffering that are a fact of human existence near and far.

“The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet. This sort of denial is no small matter. The way we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life more than anything else. The way we protect ourselves from loss may be the way in which we distance ourselves from life… We burn out not because we don’t care but because we don’t grieve. We burn out because we’ve allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care.”

I wish you glorious days of summer, and a renewed capacity to care.

#5448: Slot editor: “My pen just ran out of ink. I’m going home.”

A: Designer’s version: “My page just ran out of space. I’m going home.” :D
B: They still let your newsroom buy pens? Wow.
C: What’s a “slot editor?”

*

Singapore has yet to emulate Japan’s productivity culture, but can make up for it in other ways, MM Lee Kuan Yew said yesterday.

Two key elements to this culture are still alien to Singaporeans, he said at a dialogue with participants at a Singapore National Employers Federation summit.

First, Japanese workers start at the bottom rung and therefore understand the workings of a company at every level.

In Singapore, by contrast, “if you send someone down to the factory floor, he feels demeaned”, said MM Lee.

Second, Japanese workers cooperate and feel a bond towards the company. They stand in for sick colleagues and, back in the days of lifetime employment, they tied their future to the company’s.

MM Lee was inspired by the Japanese to launch Singapore’s first productivity drive in the 1980s and even took them on as consultants. But it’s still a work in progress.

“We’ve been trying every since,” he said. “Can (we) equal the Japanese? Very unlikely. Can we be competent? Yes. But we don’t have the culture.”

Instead, Singapore could succeed in supporting productivity growth with its more Western orientation and its openness to foreign talent.

This, to MM Lee, meant developing a “Singaporean brand” — making Singapore an attractive place to live, with security, good infrastructure and communications and a local culture that foreigners could adapt to easily.

Singapore could also capitalise on other strengths, such as its complex manufacturing industries, its research and development infrastructure, biomedical services and water technology.

It could also position itself as a base for Asian companies to expand, due to its global outlook, he added.

Japan, by contrast, loses out by being more insular.

“They try to become a financial centre, but they don’t have an English-speaking population, they don’t embrace the foreign workers who go there,” he said.

“These are areas where we have made up for what is special in Japan, which unfortunately I don’t think we can recreate. We can’t change the culture of a people so easily.”

*

Read Philippe Legrain’s Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them. It’s good stuff.

YOU have to read it here as I can’t reproduce it.

Sweet-scented jasmine clambering up the walls,
and green leaves burning on an orange tree…

I travel to where the green leaves burn,
To where the ocean’s glass-clear and blue,
To places our teacher taught me to love –
And which he never knew.

Very lovely.

*

The rocks upon which we viewed the dolphins

Storm brewing over the Mekong, on the Lao/Cambodian border

We escaped the storm just in time.

Pictures from dolphin-viewing last month.

D SAID he tried not to be too harsh on himself as he’s not found a partner when we were talking of his parents; I thought of LKY and his love for his wife and how tough it must be when someone you love is dying.

I told my diving partners when we were on the ferry that one of the things I look for when I’m looking long term is whether this person will be there and dependable when the shit hits the fan, such as when if one or both of us should fall seriously ill, if a child runs into trouble, when there are different pulls on our time and needs. A good marriage is about compromise and support and working together towards joint goals.

Came across Gottman when I was reading Malcolm Gladwell. He can predict whether a couple will divorce after watching and listening to them for just five minutes.

From John M. Gottman, The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work (ISBN: 0609805797):

What can make a marriage work is surprisingly simple. Happily married couples aren’t smarter, richer, or more psychologically astute than others. But in their day-to-day lives, they have hit upon a dynamic that keeps their negative thoughts and feelings about each other (which all couples have) from overwhelming their positive ones. They have what I call an emotionally intelligent marriage.

Recently, emotional intelligence has become widely recognised as an important predictor of a child’s success later in life. The more in touch with emotions and the better able a child is to understand and get along with others, the sunnier that child’s future, whatever his or her academic IQ. The same is true for relationships between spouses. The more emotionally intelligent a couple — the better able they are to understand, honour, and respect each other and their marriage — the more likely that they will indeed live happily ever after. Just as parents can teach their children emotional intelligence, this is also a skill that a couple can be taught. As simple as it sounds, it can keep husband and wife on the positive side of the divorce odds.

Perhaps family lawyers who handle divorce cases should also have a list of counsellors or psychologists who can also do marital counselling? If I do by some chance end up in law, this is something I’d look into — counselling for couples seeking divorce.

In the meantime there’s NUS stuff to go through and courses to sign up for. Pretty excited about it all, actually — I might end up in teaching rather than law after all.

WAS totally kick-ass; I’ll get the DVD when it comes out. Left the cinema with half-formed thoughts on Goedel, Escher, Bach and Turing and Chinese Room etc.

Bist du zu schlau, um nicht unangenehm aufzufallen
und nicht schön genug, um damit durchzukommen?
Weißt du genau, wie es ist, immer raus zu fallen
nur nicht weit genug, um woanders anzukommen?

Es tut weh, so zu sein, wie du solltest
Es tut weh, zu sein, wie du bist - Aber wenn der
Quarterback kommt, um dir die Brille abzunehmen Sag ihm:
Danke, die bleibt wo sie ist
Ich weiß doch:

Die Verletzten sollen die Ärzte sein
Die Letzten sollen die Ersten sein
Sieh es ein: The Meek shall inherit the earth
Die Verletzten sollen die Ärzte sein
Die Letzten sollen die Ersten sein
Die Ersten sehen als Letzte ein:
The Geek shall inherit the earth

Nicht deine Zeit, nicht deine Füße,
nicht dein Beat, nicht deine Leute,
deine Welt nicht, und nicht mal dein Schmerz
Du musst hier nicht dazugehören, aber such dir, was zu dir gehört
Du musst nicht tanzen, aber beweg dein Herz

Es tut weh, so zu sein, wie du denkst, dass du solltest
Es tut weh, so zu sein, wie du denkst, dass du bist - Aber wenn die
Homecoming Queen kommt, um dich wach zu küssen
Sag ihr Danke, ich hab nichts vermisst
Ich weiß doch:

Die Verletzten sollen die Ärzte sein
Die Letzten sollen die Ersten sein …

Es tut weh, so zu sein, wie du denkst, dass du solltest
wenn dein Lehrer dich fragt, sollen wir uns nicht öfter sehen
Es tut gut, so zu sein, wie du denkst, dass du möchtest
wenn du sagst: Herr, lass diesen Knilch an mir vorübergehen

– Lyrics of one of my favourite songs.

TALKING to one of my best friends about Queen Bees in her department…having been a bully once in my primary school days I understand how the alpha thing works. Unfortunately I turned out to have a butt-ugly period during my teens and joined totally uncool activities like the Interact Club (community service) and the Environment Club (we reared worms for composting, for Chrissakes) and went through a period of being the geek, so I’ve been on the other side of the “cool” line.

Seriously. I’m a peasant, not a princess, and I don’t need the titles or the handbags or the backstabbing that comes along with playing politics to get ahead. I also don’t need the pit vipers competing with me for the “alpha” high-status males. That’s not to say I’m without envy or malice myself. Believe me, I do feel it. The thing is to give your conscience free rein to bite you hard and kick you in the arse.

Save your energy, mean girls, I’m out of the game. Odd thing about the rat race: No matter how far ahead you get, you remain. A. Rat. And Golden Boys, be careful about who’s hanging out with you and for what reasons. I’ve been backstabbed a couple of times, and while I forgive, I never forget. 这样才会成长。 That’s how we learn. And that gut feel, yeah — very important.

I’d rather have a simple life than worry about my conscience. I’d rather be a starving poet (though law *is* beginning to interest me) than do all that bitchy manoeuvring. If we can’t change the system, just get out of it. Burn bridges. Block the energy sappers. And what goes around always comes back around.

OMG, am swooning over the beautiful water still…

KARMA. What goes around comes around; I’ve had enough of guilt trips. Let me not be reckless with people’s hearts…& fuck, let me not turn out to be schizophrenic + delusional like Gollum…

In any case, watched How To Train Your Dragon (OMG so cute!!!), Toy Story 3, Alvin And The Chipmunks during the long long journey to and from Singapore and Terengganu. My favourite has definitely’s the Dragon show, which made me laugh, and had wonderful animation. Oohh, the dragons being tamed are so cute! I loved the way they keeled over when you knew what to do with them. So. Adorable!

*

Laguna Redang is where they shot Summer Holiday, a Hong Kong film with Sammi Cheng and even Tay Ping Hui. It’s very popular with Chinese tourists, and I did sleep well…had the chance to recce around and look at other resorts too.

The bus ride is a bit too long, though, you spend 12h on the coach, so unless I’m staying for a longer period of time I’m going to dive somewhere I can fly to.

Interesting to take a look at the Malaysian countryside when I’m on the coach, looking at hotel development, how much or how little traditional ways of life have changed. I like the laid back East Coast of Malaysia quite a lot, not least because I’ve fond memories of watching leatherbacks lay eggs along Terengganu beach when I was a child.

Redang…beautiful white sand between my toes & clearest blue waters too. Mmm….

AND relaxing after finishing my first dive of the year, after I got certified last July. Saw a hawksbill turtle, a dead hawksbill turtle, and a huge blue-spotted ray :) Had to surface as I was cramping and my fins dropped off two times, though, and my sinuses are not feeling all that great. We’ll see if I can continue diving tomorrow…

I’m with a fun bunch of people, who’re much more experienced divers. I’ve only logged six dives, while the rest of them have at least 30 under their belt.

Am pretty rusty when it comes to buoyancy, and I’d even forgotten how to put the gear together…but as with driving and other hands-on skills, it’s by doing that we learn. I adore the feeling of weightlessness under water. It’s so good to just float along, with zero gravity.

Would love to get S and DS and JC and the rest of the divers out, but everybody seems to be busy with work or are injured. LT is interested in learning, though, and I’m very enthused about having another potential buddy.

And gearing up…a pair of fins, booties and a mesh bag is the next step, with a BCD eventually…will want to try out other people’s gear when I go on course. A regulator, I’m not so sure. A dive computer can wait as well, though it may well be my next watch. C has a Swatch watch that goes up to 200m and doesn’t cost that much. I think there’s a huge market for pretty girls’ dive logs, dive computers, gear bags (come on, why are they all in uniform IBM black), und so weiter. I chose my Beuchat wetsuit because it’s edged in pink, and the Tusa snorkel and mask strap cos they come in pink as well. Maybe we can have little dolphins and Nemos with flowers all over our stuff… :)

*

From Writer’s Almanac.

This is why I like KFC actually, it lets me share meals with my Muslim friends. I get a bit sick of fried food all the time…I actually (secretly) like YTF despite bitching about it all the time. Hey, I am Hakka.

Perhaps the World Ends Here
by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what,
we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the
table so it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe
at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what
it means to be human. We make men at it,
we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts
of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms
around our children. They laugh with us at our poor
falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back
together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella
in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place
to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate
the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared
our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow.
We pray of suffering and remorse.
We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table,
while we are laughing and crying,
eating of the last sweet bite.

“Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo, from Reinventing the Enemy’s Language. © W.W. Norton and Co., 1998. Reprinted with permission.

*

A (at the buffet): She’s going Western style, course by course.
B: I’m going Ethiopian style as I don’t want to vomit underwater.
C: I’m going garbage style: Everything also goes in.

A: So we were in the army and this guy I knew was quite pampered at home. So he put stones in his pocket or something to march for three hours and ended up going to see the medic with huge bruises and abrasions on his thighs. He got out of heavy marching for days after that…
D: Wow, that’s smart.
A: This guy is quiet but he’s good. There he is. (points to E)
E smiles.
A: To this day we’re not sure what exactly he did. We’re just guessing it’s stones.

A: I was at a demonstration…
B: Oh! A demonstration!
A: No. They don’t do that in Singapore, remember? A demonstration of broadband blah blah…

B: We’re like the Venice of the East.
A: Soon the gondolas will go down Orchard Road.

A: I want to ask my father about…
B: Whether he sired any illegitimate children?
A: Yes, I’m sure that’ll be one of my questions. Do I have any half-Vietnamese half-siblings?

B: Ok, time for the show-and-tell. This word here (from calligraphy class) means peace. It reminds me of those weird-ass tattoos you see on white people who don’t know what the Chinese characters mean. You could write “kick me” and they wouldn’t know.
A: I would love to have “kick me” in calligraphy.
B: That could be arranged.

A: I’d like tattoos saying Haemophiliac Type B in the language of every country I’ve been to.
B: It depends on the educational level of the tattoo artist. I don’t think tattooists would be able to translate that. I wouldn’t know what it is in Chinese, for instance.
A: Oh I’ll get the doctors to write it down.
B: What about instructions on what to do?
A: It’ll say “flip over for instructions” and the instructions will be on the back. Or lift left leg for instructions and they’ll be on my thigh.

B: I’m sure many people attend church not so much because they believe but more for the social and community opportunities. Like a ritual for a family on Sunday.
A: Our family ritual on Sundays was to visit the Original House of Pancakes…
B: Of course. It has to be Original…
A: and read the Sunday papers in silence. My mother and sister always felt offended that we didn’t talk.
B: Well, they can talk to each other.
A: Yes, we should have just placed them at the Talker’s Table.

SG beach

UP EARLY and saw a gaggle of volunteers bringing kids around Pasir Ris and eating at the Downtown East foodcourt (where I had terrible kway chap). I love the Americans for their public-spiritedness.

Also reading ST. I like the interview with Dr Crowhurst Lennard, on a child-friendly liveable city. SG is “not thinking small enough. Child-sized, to be precise, because cities must first be liveable for kids before they can be liveable for all”.

Child-friendly cities thrive because everyone needs fundamentally the same things, like an accessible environment and rich social life. By focusing on meeting the needs of children — one of the most vulnerable and physically weakest groups in the community — the city can get its basics right.

But that does not mean ever more kiddie rides, cartoon murals or playgrounds. “The ideal play area for children is the city itself,” says Dr Crowhurst Lennard, 65, the founder of the International Making Cities Liveable Council, which is based in Portland, Oregon.

Generally, it is a bad idea to relegate children to just children’s facilities because they learn best when able to freely mingle with and observe adults in an everyday setting. And catering to children is not that hard.

“On a simple level, it is a matter of walkability. Children have to be able to get around safely on their own as early as possible and explore their environment.

“That means it has to be safe not only from traffic, but also a good socially safe environment where there are familiar adults along the way who recognise them and speak to them — people of different ages,” she said.

So, buildings, roads, parks and street furniture should be designed to inspire imagination, invite exploration and serve multiple uses…”All kinds of public art should be meaningful and understandable to children. They should tell children about the history and traditions of the city. And they should be able to be played on.”…

Malls are increasingly becoming meeting spots and teenage hang-outs as they are being planned around transport nodes, but Dr Crowhurst Lennard says they are “not ideal” as a public space given the restrictions on what can occur there. Instead, an open, flexible public space does better at engaging young minds. “It can be used as a market in the morning, for festivals in the afternoon and on a quiet (evening), just for sitting out and relating to people…It can be used for a school performance or some kind of local community festival.”

The thing is…

JUST read this amazing book by Carlos Fuentes, which I found on the library shelves.

The person who works by night inevitably ends up feeling like the creator of the world. If he doesn’t work through the night, the sun will not come out the following day. As I would be getting ready for bed, Carlos would come in to say goodnight, wrapped in an old beach robe. Only once, thinking that I was asleep, did he retreat from me murmuring, “I am damned.” Then the night would come and give him all the education he needed. The night was his metaphor. The night came and no one could stop it. It is the hour for the creation that battles with darkness and death.

*

Confederacy of shadows, intertwined destinies and death, people and all they leave behind, inert, in a drawer, in a closet, on an empty canvas or a blank page. And despite everything, we fight to hold on to the heat of the object, the force of the brushstroke, the footprint of the man who walks…What joy it was to learn that Carlos, gifted with an intuition that was both wonderful and terrible, spent the last evening of his existence, in Puerto Vallarta, phoning all his friends, all over the world, telling them about his plans to finish his movie, publish his book of poems, exhibit his artwork, telling them he was happy, strong, full of creativity, in love with his girlfriend Yvette. The following morning he collapsed under the weight of a pulmonary infarction.

*

If I’ve a child I might well name her Carol. For music’s sake. We give names to exorcise. I’m a poet. I’m not a lawyer. But I’ll learn because of issues dear to me, such as land law. It’s gonna be a long road ahead, but I’m pretty happy…was surfing the Intranet for NUS courses and getting. So. Excited! :) I eventually want to teach, though. NUS seems like the best choice. Are they short of teachers or what? How come so many interesting-sounding courses are not being offered?

YAY, am finally getting my Master’s degree. Spent a very enjoyable day at NUS today, wandering about and getting paperwork done, I’m finally a card-bearing member of the university. I like the co-op, the pools, the facilities and the nice big trees all around campus.

Unfortunately, am also at my fattest EVER. I’ve NEVER been this heavy — though I can fit fine into my clothes, I know I’m stressed or something’s out of whack whenever I weigh more than 52kg. Time to cut down on recreational eating and exercise more — swim or jog instead of cycling, which doesn’t really get the heartrate up. Yes, yes, I rant on about neurotic overexercising but I’m vain like that as well.

Meeting D tomorrow for shisha after calligraphy, yay! And there’s also packing to be done for the dive trip, and writing poetry as well. Hrmpf.

Also been getting the weirdest sorts of spam, from Muslim fundamentalists (of all things) to mail-order grooms from Canada. Perhaps I’d better be more careful about publicly listing my e-mail address. In the meantime, I’m staying put in Singapore!

Am pretty glad for this, actually. It’s hard to choose sides, but if I ever did have to, I know I’ll choose home. And this place is home. Bought two bright orange shirts for the Aged Parents, and man, I have to lose weight and get some exercise.

KATRIN is visiting soon and I’m drawing up a list of foodie places to take her.

- Tiong Bahru Market
- Geylang for beef hor fun and dim sum and soya bean curd.
- Eunos station Bak Kut Teh
- Joo Chiat/Katong laksa + Naive
- Dim Sum at Sunshine plaza + wantan mee
- Thien Kee at Beach Road
- Purvis Hainanese stalls
- Maxwell Road food market then Screening Room
- Haji Lane
- Dumplings at Din Tai Fung
- Buffet at Hyatt’s Straits Kitchen
- Blue Ginger
- Kong Bak Pau at Beng Hiang, Amoy St
- Satay + Milo dinosaur at Lau Pa Sat
- Roti prata at Jalan Kayu
- Lagnaa in Little India
- Nasi Lemak at Changi and then cycling in Ubin. And coconut, of course. Coconut.

● 韩咏红

　　你大概记得张艺谋的电影《一个都不能少》？故事是说某山区小学高老师赶着回乡看望病重的母亲，临时找来13岁的孩子魏敏芝当一个月代课老师。高老师交代魏敏芝看住孩子，不能让他们辍学，“一个都不能少”。果然，班上有10岁的同学因家贫欠债被迫辍学进城当童工，小老师魏敏芝谨记高老师的嘱托，与全班同学凑钱要把他找回来。小老师在城市里开展了茫茫寻人之路。

　　12年前的电影，因为情节与演员气质都质朴感人，由于简单的故事主线触到了中国乡村贫困的现实与人类的善良本质，所以让人念念不忘。在艰难处境中，大伙儿要同舟共济，不让任何人落单，这是小朋友的行为所体现的道理。

　　2010年的中国社会与政治环境，让人特别容易联想到这部电影。

　　这些年来，中国经济之突飞猛进早已经不是新闻。从数据上看，在1990年以前，中国国内生产总值（GDP）还没达到4000亿美元；这个数字在1995年就超过了7000亿美元，2000年再突破万亿美元；到了2009年底，官方数字显示GDP总量达到了4.92万亿美元。20年来，经济总量绝对是以几何倍数增长。

　　但是在同一时候，与翻红的经济构成刺眼反比的是中国贫富差距加剧扩大，区域发展不均衡凸显，以及劳动报酬占GDP比重连降22年，下降幅度将近20%，行业间收入差距达到 16倍。冷冰冰的数据反映的事实是：经济越发展，财富分配越不均衡，穷人分得的蛋糕比例越小。

　　有时候，外界会看到中央政府试图扭转不公平现象扩大的趋势。例如今年以来，中央先后召开第五次西藏工作座谈会与第一次新疆工作座谈会，强调要加大力度推进这两个西部落后地区的“跨越式”发展。经过多年的经济建设，如今弹药充足的中国政府开出的支票数额大得惊人：新疆工作座谈会宣示在2011年到2015年，对新疆的社会固定资产投资将达到2万亿人民币（4080亿新元）。

　　今年，中央的目光不限于少数民族地区，7月上旬召开的第一次西部大开发工作会议，最高领导人提出目标，包括了很多个“大台阶”：今后10年让西部地区综合经济实力上一个大台阶；人民生活水平和质量上一个大台阶，基本公共服务能力与东部地区差距明显缩小；生态环境保护上一个大台阶。同时，国家发改委公布今年新开工的23个西部重点，总规模达6822亿元人民币。这个数额，较前十年西部大开发年均投资总额增长3 倍有余。

　　政府将关爱的眼神投向西部，宏观的背景是为了如期实现2020年全面建设小康社会的目标；更大的驱动力是西部少数民族地区严重的社会暴乱与落后地区频发的群体性事件。再此之外，领导精英估计也看到，反正钱多了，与其购买大量美国国债承受美元贬值的风险，不如将财富分给国内落后地区的同胞。

　　近期这类开发落后地区的新闻，或在西部采访时，我总想起《一个都不能少》。30年前中国决心放弃计划经济探索市场经济道路，提法是“让一部分人富起来”，慢慢地，现实中不只是一部分人“先富起来”，而是只有一部分人富起来，甚至是不合理或违法地暴富，并且这个结果还被视为理所当然。

　“一个都不能少”是很简单的信念，即不要失去任何人，不让任何人落单，其含义却是深刻的。曾经，在GDP挂帅与集体主义的名义下，国家领导与全社会接受、容忍与允许无数的弱势群体落后。事实证明，遭到边缘化的弱者不可能永远默不作声，尤其社会越发展信息越发达，弱势者的反扑强烈冲击歌舞升平的美好景象。

　　今天，反过来照顾弱势群体，缓解贫富差距是必要的。只不过，如果贫富差距，地区发展不协调的格局已经固化，在西部投资的几千亿万亿元，最终创造的财富也可能是由大型国企与公有部门占大比例，民间占小部分，而不公正的现象依然持续。

　　要在加大投资的同时转贫富两极分化，需要冲破现有利益格局，否则落后地区也可能经济越增长社会越不稳定。

　　最终，时间将检验出为政者政策设计的能力，诚意与勇气——政策的执行过程将更接近“一个都不能少”的公平原则，还是继续假设GDP增长能够解决一切。

These remarks are from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos commencement speech to Princeton’s Class of 2010, delivered on May 30, 2010.

As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.

At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage — figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”

I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

This is a group with many gifts. I’m sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I’m confident that’s the case because admission is competitive and if there weren’t some signs that you’re clever, the dean of admission wouldn’t have let you in.

Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans — plodding as we are — will astonish ourselves. We’ll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we’ll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we’ve synthesized life. In the coming years, we’ll not only synthesize it, but we’ll engineer it to specifications. I believe you’ll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton — all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.

How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?

I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles — something that simply couldn’t exist in the physical world — was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I’d been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most startups don’t, and I wasn’t sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor. I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice.

Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life — the life you author from scratch on your own — begins.

How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?

Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?

Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?

Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?

Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?

Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?

Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?

Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?

When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?

Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?

Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/we-are-what-we-choose-2010-6#ixzz0u4ePcZIo

*

Was cycling and saw this cute white bus from Bedok Transport that said it’s running off oil from Ikea’s kitchens for World Environment Day.

http://www.bedoktransport.com/

Cute. I’ll keep this company in mind if I ever need to charter buses.

SG beach

Brownies on Pulau Semakau

A message from a tree-hugger

TRASH in the ocean doesn’t fall from the sky — it falls from people’s hands. Since 1986, millions around the globe have joined in Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, the world’s largest volunteer effort to clean up our marine environment.

It’s not just about picking up rubbish, it’s also being about a data detective. Who’s trashing the ocean and waterways? Ocean Conservancy analyses the data we will collect on Sept 11 to determine what activities are likely to be causing the debris in the area. For instance, a potato chip bag may indicate picnickers while a 1-quart oil bottle probably came from a boat, and a strapping band likely from a cargo ship.

The information on your data card will be used to help citizens, community groups and schools, municipalities, business and industry, and government agencies develop solutions for pollution problems associated with coastal and water-borne debris. Filling out your data card as accurately as possible will lead to better debris solutions for the community!

For your safety:
- Do not go near any large barrels or drums
- Be careful with sharp objects and syringes
- Wear gloves and close-toed shoes
- Stay out of dunes and natural areas
- Watch out for wildlife
- Don’t lift anything too heavy

Clean-up tips:
- Collect data as a team, with one person recording items on the data cards, while others collect and bag trash.
- Bag all the debris you find on the beach and shoreline (above and below the waterline), but record information only on the items specifically listed on the data card.
- Use tick marks to keep count of your items and enter the total in the box to the left of each debris item.
- Use only numbers to record quantities. Do not write words such as “lots” or “many”
- Leave natural items like driftwood or seaweed on the beach. Avoid stepping on dune plants and grass.

We will limit enrolment to 18 as I’m new to organising and this is run almost like an army operation…We will “adopt” the site together with Hougang Secondary School’s uniformed groups.

You can read all the information here.

1. Part I. The impact of marine debris
2. Part II. Marine Life in Singapore (very cute, we have dugongs and dolphins)
3. Part III. Analysis & Relevance of ICC Data
4. Part IV. What can we do
5. Part V. How to organize a cleanup (for organiser to review)
6. Part VI. Conduct the ICCS briefing

Volunteers will have to bring their own gloves (cotton gloves can be bought from army supplies stores islandwide), black trash bag and poncho/umbrella (we will call off the event in case of lightning) and find their own way to Tanah Merah 3-5. We’ll meet at the NSRCC car park* at 9am on Sept 11. The event will end at 12pm, with all trash bags to be placed at the NSRCC carpark trash bins. I will print out a data card for each group of three.

I need someone who’s familiar with excel to help upload the information to the site. I suppose I *can* do it, but I dislike excel…

E-mail yvonnekoh@gmail.com to register.

—

*

National Service Resort & Country Club,
10 Changi Coast Walk, Singapore 499739
Tel: (65) 6542 8288 Fax: (65) 6545 6508

LSE:

A: Should convicted poachers receive capital punishment? Discuss.
B: No, because if there is to be capital punishment at all, we have bigger fish to fry than poachers.
A: Like rapists and murderers?
B: That. Was totally what I considered typing. Those two groups, in that order. Haha.
A: You can add violence to women and children as crimes heinous enough to warrant capital punishment…

Princeton:

C: Just found out that I have inadvertently smuggled illegal goods into China - poppy seed bagels that I got from a Costco in Taiwan. It turns out poppy seeds are illegal in China, which is why the Beijing-based company Mrs. Shanen’s bagels doesn’t do poppy seed flavored ones!

Still working on a set that I’ve promised to hand over. I just lost one I’ve worked on due to technical error, sigh.

*

I give you remembrance flooding all your senses
with the hunger of hands searching in the dark.

Recall how your eyes close when I fall asleep.
A safe place to die. Where broken promises knit.

I return to you these keys that guard you
from the grief that stands at your gates.

And I grant you release from yearning’s teeth,
and I grant you the peace of ordinary days.

Thirst of those who drink from the water’s edge
satisfied. Craters made full. Love’s debts paid.

*

Before
by Mark Halliday

Before you were you,
before your bicycle appeared under the street-lamp,
before you met me at the airport in a corduroy jacket,

before you agreed to hold my five ballpoint pens
while I ran to play touch football,
before your wet hair nearly touched the piano keys

and in advance of how your raincoat was tightly cinched
when you asked about nonviolent anti-war activity
and before you said “Truffaut,”

before your voice supernaturally soft sang
“I aweary wait upon the shore,”
before you suddenly stroked my thigh in the old Volvo,

when you had not yet said “Marcus Aurelius at 11:15″
and before your white shirt on te train,
before Pachelbel and “My Creole Belle”

and before your lips were so cool under that street-lamp
and before Buddy Holly in Vermont on the sofa
and Yeats in the library lounge,

prior to your denim cutoffs on the porch,
prior to my notes and your notes
and before your name became a pulsing star,

before all this
ah safer and smoother and smaller was my heart.