What a silly title for a blog right? Well, that is only half the story. It is just that I have no unifying theme for this blog. I thought I will just blog about all the little snippets of life as I remember and experience them.
First things first. I thought I should just clarify that all blimps possess experiences worth our listen especially if it is pertinent and up-to-date with our situation. Nonetheless, do not guillibly take all in without your own filter lenses and analyses. Some just exaggerate and make it seems like they know more than they do. Others by sheer force of their loud personality think they can shove all down your throat and intimidate.
Bimbs too mustn't be lumped as one with all womenfolk. Though I seriously confess to seeing very few of the rational and thinking ones.
Come on. If you are a real man, let us slug this out fist-to-fist one on one.
Just like this blimpo I met at the gymnasium some years ago. Eversince then he has been stalking me for no good reason other than he knew he has lost his reasoning high ground. To start off, he had been a real fucktard to send some of his khakis to test me out. Like scrambling with me on purpose for the gym equipment.
This old fucktard is already someone in his sixties, fat as a blimpo and still thinks he wants to build muscles when all he does is to mass up on his lards. He has an equally fucked up attitude and loud voice to match. He is able to go without a hand towel and hogs the machines by virtue of the fact that he is on good terms with the instructor and does not have to follow certain rules.
He opens his mouth and rubbish spews like trash from the garbage incinerator. Without good facts and reasons, he alleges one and all of misdeeds and misinforms. Any idiot who acts on his words must surely had it. That was when I ticked him off and he wasn't happy at being contradicted and he knew he was wrong.
I am only waiting for the day he kicks the bucket or grows older. Let us see if he is still so "garang". I can imagine him in a wheelchair, sedate and frail with age. That could perhaps be why I rather work with youths who are still malleable and not the aged. Who knows what they did in their youth and this is their karma!
Speaking of which, the whole place run by our very own sports council looks like a concrete bunker in want of more space and better free weights, most of which were rusting and loose in the screws. I am supposed to incur extra cost in purchasing training gloves when this is the responsibility of the gymnasium. I have to wash my own clothes too for christ's sake if the rust were to rub onto my training gear which it does at times.
The entire bunker reeks of smell and rot anyway so if anyone wants to complain about sweaty hygiene, I suggest they should just leave for some place else like I did. After all a gymnasium is for sweating it out and if you have a problem with that, please this is not a spa for cosmeticians. Besides, members in privilege with the instructor can strew weights all over the floor endangering one and all just like a battlefront trooper trying to side step a minefield.
All this blood-shot eyed wimp of an instructor does is sit around, does nothing and gets his monthly ration. No service. No looking after the place. No control with the people whom he unfairly lets off because they are his friends. He epitomises the all brawn but no brains him/bimbo. A real arsehole for sure.
If they have ladies' hour and close the gym to us, then perhaps they can have men's hour too. Or gays' night or hour. What about lesbians' day?
I just realised we have reduced life here to one big place of a retail mall operation. That is all we are now - a retail megamall. If our private schools have to be casetrusted, which incidentally handles other complaints ranging from insurance to maid agencies to misleading advertisements and is our consumers' advocate cum watch-dog, it says only one thing about private education - it is a retail mall operation, no different from a food-court or a hair-dressing shop .
All I can see being transmitted through these and other institutions are hate, violence , hostility. prejudices and rebelliousness. Youths while growing up face challenges in their identities, sense of self and worth. What with all the peer pressure, media pressure, family pressure , work pressure and societal demands at stereotyping!
To have a discipline master/mistress to compound further their frustrations in terms of whacks, nit-pickings, fiery display of authority over trivias other than some form of a good heart-to-heart talk to nip the problem at its bud, is like tying them down with shackles of a cannon-ball. More hate, rebellion and hostility. What goes around comes around.
I know because at this commercial school, I have been accused of many trivias, trivias the bitches were pumping onto me because they were jealous, lazy, incompetent, cutting corners and they were trying to shove their shortcomings onto me. They know they could not match up .
My problem then was I did not fight back. This is what I get for respecting the opposite sex, being a gentleman and deferring to authority. Even if you help out with administration or switch off the air-conditioner(a practice not all do), they accuse you of the opposite and that you are reading private mail when the fact is that it spilled out as I reach for other papers on the shelf.
I say to hell. I will not be that old self again. I am going to fight you with good reasoning. If you have better, I will bow out.
Did they think of me when they broke my rice bowl? Nope. I am going to break yours too if you prove wrong.
Calculative as the world is, I would have done the same when I was served toasted kaya bread with two big holes through the slices. But I didn't. Some people think you cannot differentiate value for your money. I mean they think you can't sense a good haircut, good food or good education. They think they can fool you all the time with their bad service, substandard quality (made up for by hunks, scantily-clad beauty queens, bribes and eats ) and meagre tasteless servings. So what if it is a $10 10-minute haircut or $80 for a 3-in-1 cheapo academic package or $4.50 for a plate of fried rice.
Would you want to be taught in places run by housewives , ex-factory workers , flight attendants and army personnel? You call this a school? Where is the management expertise? We all have to take orders from this motley crew who knows next to nuts about curriculum.
People with no ability or competence who are there manning a place only because they are family. You call this fairness or justice?
I had a scion who is the Directoress of Studies who does not as much utter a word about curriculum as she does about everything else. No audio-tapes for listening comprehension and I have to read the text aloud. No textbooks and I have to photo-copy every single lesson module. They have the manpower resources and the texts were readily available at book stores.
On top of that, we have ridiculous policies formulated by top-notch high flyers I presume who cannot see the impact of the stranglehold on businesses' lifelines or their asinide requirements? One does one thing and someone else picks up the tab. There is no rhyme or reason for legislative needs when this is apparently not in sychronisation with the circumstances.
I seethe with anger as I am one such victim of their callous formulation. You are paid to think through the policies and that is your job, not mine. Why is there so much ridiculous details that I cannot even fathom?
Sometimes when I see "justice" being meted out, it just ain't justice anymore. Like this librarian approaching a girl fingering a guitar and not actually strumming any strings at all and telling her that that is not allowed. It is a classic manifestation of what our eyes are not really seeing. A diabetic aged cannot even have a sip of water on the premises. What about instilling some common sense in judgement or parrying of the rules and regulations when that is necessary?
I can understand with the stresses and pressures (man-made ones usually because we think we are so smart, we come up with all kinds of procedures, practices, rituals and all) going on around us, we are just not relaxed or open enough to see the real truth or situation.
That is why it is important we keep fit and healthy, build on our cognitive and phenomenological senses so we can judge better, see perspicaciously, think swiftly and decide wisely. Otherwise we are going to create many rifts and just one rift can be the proportion of what is happening in the world - the civilisational conflicts.
When I read about the wars between the Palestinians and the Israelis, it seems to be man's making again. This started with the beginning of civilisation 3000BC ago which led consequentially to the uprooting of one land's citizens with the rise of two Western religions and cultures.
To top it all, a 1948 plan screwed up when one overseeing party just washed its hands of its jurisdiction to a peaceful creation and partition of a new state. If only it had stuck with the plan, the people of Palestine/Israel would have a much easier and peaceful retreat.
We should all have stuck with our instinctual nomadic days. To each on his own. No trespassing or encroachment. You go your way and I mine. None of all these gathering together of diverse and different people would have squeezed them into killing each other.
My old neighbors did not place any articles outside our corridor. We may have some minor differences but we lived together almost serenely for more than five years. Although both women were bitchy nosey parkers with one wanting to see the inside of my house and the other displaying a bad sense of propriety when she audaciously asks of my contractor the price of my furniture.
Once the new ones begin placing shoe boxes, it was one article after another. I have to stake my territory as one new neighbor actually has the gall to thrust his all the way up to my doorway.
He has his front door opened almost 18 hours a day with a bawling kid in the hallway which I can hear even with my door closed. I guess they love living the fish-bowl life. They must be showing off to one and all the "fantastic young marriage" they are living. I will give them a few more years before cracks start lining up.
One group dominating over another. What right is it anyway? A cleaning supervisor nit-picking on the work of its cleaners. Some cleaners are just so efficient, I almost choke on my food trying to gobble it down as they hover and clear the trays with lightning speed. Even when I haven't finished my soup or something.
I spilled my drink once when I was "harassed" this way as I try to motion to her that I haven't finished with the sugar cane and was walking away to get some food. Of all days it was a white T-shirt I was wearing and on an important occasion. So it was one huge wash-a-laundry late that night. Thank you very much. Can you help me clean up my clothes as well?
If domination is justifiable, why not. If it isn't, well, may another war loom writ large then. I am just going to learn to give others a taste of their own bitter medicine. Why should I always be the giving-in kind? Everyone is imperfect but when you try to make me worse than your imperfection to the detriment of my livelihood, don't expect me not to retaliate.
By the way, I seriously wonder about the lives of the many "mad" people I see on the streets. I wonder why they have turned out to be like that. Could it be our environment which they have suffered as a consequence of injustices inficted upon them? Well if I ever should go that way, perhaps I will finally have peace of mind.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Guns, Germs, Steel And The Clash of Civilisations
My O my. After reading Jared Diamond's "Guns, germs and steel" which essentially is a brief history book about peopling and everything, I can hardly believe how uncannily it mirrors my thoughts and articulates my exact views all along.
Therefore my FANE and NWO theories stand substantiated by brilliant books like Jared's , Paul M Kennedy's and Samuel Hungtington's.
For instance, I now have conclusive proof from Mr Guru himself that when our tribal ancestors were bipedalling tall and naked while beating around the bushes, they were bound by kinship and very egalitarian. They were tied together, mashed in as it were by some umbilical cord of blood relations. Blood is thicker than water?
It was only when some bloke decided that he wanted to grow sedentary and fat that he built villages, observed how his latrine of a cess pit started sprouting food crops and tethered wild animals as pets or for food. Bingo! A state is born with agriculture as its bedrock.
Chiefdom, statehood and kleptocracy all went swaggering down the slippery road of advancement, not necessarily in that order. Don't forget the waging of war and the rise of military power.
Mr Guru also provided me with a rare and unusual insight, a glimpse as a foresight of what I have been thinking and saying in both my theories. When the Sumerians invented writing, it was more as a need for accounting purposes. It was to record what some farmers owe the state as a tribute or tax.
Tax Collector: Ah! Ah Lau! You owe the state two sheep, twenty cows and two dogs (furiously scribbling onto tablet with reed stylus)
Ah Lau: Orh. Make that a credit lo. I will pay you all dues as soon as the coveted prized semem of the American bulls make their way here next week and artificially inseminate my she-cows!
Hence paper currency and mint coins are just our own physical devices for exchange and trade. We could easily convert this into the old system of a "all-in-the-mind" imaginary book-keeping exercise. A product of our imagination such as color or cybergames.
It is an arbitrary convention we have created. Like the calendar or the metric system (counting in tens where other civilisations have done in twos or twelves). All arbitrariness can be replaced or chucked down the rubbish chute.
Man-made, artificial and if it imposes upon our lives, I say we smother it to death with our pillows, much as we would with Sleeping Beauty. Why else would that woman be sleeping if not for a drug overdose and to compound the dilemma, occupying precious space to fit her vegetating form ? Send her to the eternal flames of hell, I'll say.
Is it any wonder sometimes that our pre-historical genetic make-up beckons to us in many a circumstances? For example, you meet someone for the first time or even among the people you are lumped together with , be it in school, at play or at work, and you have this primordal urge to kill "him" ? Take it easy. This is only our true nature a-calling.
Giggling girls: Hee hee hee (100x). You never do homework ah? Orh. Die liao. Hee hee (50x)
Coupling girls:(with laptop displaying "Kiss me before my boyfriend comes back" screen - the impudence and sluttiness of it all) Where shall we plug our laptop? (moving around, exposing mid-riff and undies outline in her pants - GOD! Get out of my face!)
Imagine a red-faced, fists clenched and teeth gnashing me, just a few steps away from them, counting sheep in my head and blowing hot and cold air. I could have jumped up and down like what a child throwing tantrums would do and bellowed " "Shut the fuck up, bitches! This is a public space. If you want to giggle, pick another spot. Like your home. And make up your mind which socket you want to plug your three pins into (that means your triangular pubis of your breasts and your nethers - muahahaha). Stop shuffling around and disturbing the peace, quiet and tranquility of the reading ambience."
What in fact is transpiring here is that perhaps men were not so gregarious as we once thought we were. We are more "hunter" in instinct, solitary and territorial. You can then extrapolate that and see for yourselves the myriad world events of killings, murders and intra-inter civilisational strifes to conclude its inexorable truth.
Just the past few days, I was personally witness to a few of these incidents. People wrangling over public property, namely the daily newspaper. A man with a look of utter irritation at the flutter of pages or a paper-bag crumpling. A woman with an unpretended disgusted scorn at her old fuddy-duddy of a seat companion beside her. It was an internalised tribal and territorial volcano just waiting to erupt.
I don't think we are built to live together like this, cloistered in some claustrophobic square footage of a space, so densely packed it makes us smoke in our hot sweaty Calvin Klein undies.
Samuel Hungtington observes that our world is partitioned into potentially hot spots for trouble of the civilisational kind. He rightly states that the economy only brings people into contact, not agreement and thus profits do not preclude conflict.
Another thumbs up for my FANE and NWO theories. I know that the UN may not be the ideal platform to uphold international collusion on this , given its past inefficacy in enforcing abidement by resolution. However, this does not mean we should not try. After all, it is the power of ideas that propel history and motivate mankind.
Lord Acton : "Ideas locked in the breasts of solitary thinkers, waiting to be unleashed upon the world like conquerors to transform the world."
Or this other quote:
"A reasonable man adapts to changes around the world. An unreasonable man changes the world to adapt to him. It takes an unreasonable man therefore to change the world."
The New World Order should also include teaching man how to behave and relate to one another, civilly and cordially with all the right attitude.
Just think the Wright Brothers and Alexander Graham Bell . If not for these revolutionaries, we would never have flight or telecommunication.
Therefore my FANE and NWO theories stand substantiated by brilliant books like Jared's , Paul M Kennedy's and Samuel Hungtington's.
For instance, I now have conclusive proof from Mr Guru himself that when our tribal ancestors were bipedalling tall and naked while beating around the bushes, they were bound by kinship and very egalitarian. They were tied together, mashed in as it were by some umbilical cord of blood relations. Blood is thicker than water?
It was only when some bloke decided that he wanted to grow sedentary and fat that he built villages, observed how his latrine of a cess pit started sprouting food crops and tethered wild animals as pets or for food. Bingo! A state is born with agriculture as its bedrock.
Chiefdom, statehood and kleptocracy all went swaggering down the slippery road of advancement, not necessarily in that order. Don't forget the waging of war and the rise of military power.
Mr Guru also provided me with a rare and unusual insight, a glimpse as a foresight of what I have been thinking and saying in both my theories. When the Sumerians invented writing, it was more as a need for accounting purposes. It was to record what some farmers owe the state as a tribute or tax.
Tax Collector: Ah! Ah Lau! You owe the state two sheep, twenty cows and two dogs (furiously scribbling onto tablet with reed stylus)
Ah Lau: Orh. Make that a credit lo. I will pay you all dues as soon as the coveted prized semem of the American bulls make their way here next week and artificially inseminate my she-cows!
Hence paper currency and mint coins are just our own physical devices for exchange and trade. We could easily convert this into the old system of a "all-in-the-mind" imaginary book-keeping exercise. A product of our imagination such as color or cybergames.
It is an arbitrary convention we have created. Like the calendar or the metric system (counting in tens where other civilisations have done in twos or twelves). All arbitrariness can be replaced or chucked down the rubbish chute.
Man-made, artificial and if it imposes upon our lives, I say we smother it to death with our pillows, much as we would with Sleeping Beauty. Why else would that woman be sleeping if not for a drug overdose and to compound the dilemma, occupying precious space to fit her vegetating form ? Send her to the eternal flames of hell, I'll say.
Is it any wonder sometimes that our pre-historical genetic make-up beckons to us in many a circumstances? For example, you meet someone for the first time or even among the people you are lumped together with , be it in school, at play or at work, and you have this primordal urge to kill "him" ? Take it easy. This is only our true nature a-calling.
Giggling girls: Hee hee hee (100x). You never do homework ah? Orh. Die liao. Hee hee (50x)
Coupling girls:(with laptop displaying "Kiss me before my boyfriend comes back" screen - the impudence and sluttiness of it all) Where shall we plug our laptop? (moving around, exposing mid-riff and undies outline in her pants - GOD! Get out of my face!)
Imagine a red-faced, fists clenched and teeth gnashing me, just a few steps away from them, counting sheep in my head and blowing hot and cold air. I could have jumped up and down like what a child throwing tantrums would do and bellowed " "Shut the fuck up, bitches! This is a public space. If you want to giggle, pick another spot. Like your home. And make up your mind which socket you want to plug your three pins into (that means your triangular pubis of your breasts and your nethers - muahahaha). Stop shuffling around and disturbing the peace, quiet and tranquility of the reading ambience."
What in fact is transpiring here is that perhaps men were not so gregarious as we once thought we were. We are more "hunter" in instinct, solitary and territorial. You can then extrapolate that and see for yourselves the myriad world events of killings, murders and intra-inter civilisational strifes to conclude its inexorable truth.
Just the past few days, I was personally witness to a few of these incidents. People wrangling over public property, namely the daily newspaper. A man with a look of utter irritation at the flutter of pages or a paper-bag crumpling. A woman with an unpretended disgusted scorn at her old fuddy-duddy of a seat companion beside her. It was an internalised tribal and territorial volcano just waiting to erupt.
I don't think we are built to live together like this, cloistered in some claustrophobic square footage of a space, so densely packed it makes us smoke in our hot sweaty Calvin Klein undies.
Samuel Hungtington observes that our world is partitioned into potentially hot spots for trouble of the civilisational kind. He rightly states that the economy only brings people into contact, not agreement and thus profits do not preclude conflict.
Another thumbs up for my FANE and NWO theories. I know that the UN may not be the ideal platform to uphold international collusion on this , given its past inefficacy in enforcing abidement by resolution. However, this does not mean we should not try. After all, it is the power of ideas that propel history and motivate mankind.
Lord Acton : "Ideas locked in the breasts of solitary thinkers, waiting to be unleashed upon the world like conquerors to transform the world."
Or this other quote:
"A reasonable man adapts to changes around the world. An unreasonable man changes the world to adapt to him. It takes an unreasonable man therefore to change the world."
The New World Order should also include teaching man how to behave and relate to one another, civilly and cordially with all the right attitude.
Just think the Wright Brothers and Alexander Graham Bell . If not for these revolutionaries, we would never have flight or telecommunication.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
They Are Everywhere
Do you on some occasions feel that Big Brother is watching you in his not too unsubtle ways? That everyone is conspiring against you? That walls have ears and your private yak and thoughts are somehow reverberating in the room which was originally meant for your eyes only? You can imagine how I feel now at this moment of my life. The Gahmen is after me.
Eversince I started blogging and having "contact" with the outside world, I began to feel eyes moving behind me, on my arse and on my johnny. It was like the Gahmen was despising me, hating me, hounding me even for all the inane remarks and scripting I have been making.
As I walked into the reading room for my morning digest of the daily news, "agents" surreptitiously planted by the state start to strike up conversations with me. They articulate some of my views exactly and seem to know what I am thinking and knowing. They try to suss out information.
On every little path I make my way to, they try to extort, cajole and instigate. I ward and defend as best as I could. I did not want to be caught in any way mouthing anything against the state. That would have been capital death with a capital C, political murder and suicide.
While peeing in the urinals, I had to be careful not to stare too hard and long at the next guy in the other urinal with his pants pulled low and undies gone and a hard dick sticking out, spouting a fountain of wealth. I would have normally reached over and peeked or stretch a hand out to touch. That is now a complete no-no.
I had to maintain a steady, straight ahead gaze, devoid of emotions or feelings.
It was after all an innocuous script I penned about a metaphorical war with a multi-ethnic and multi-national flavor. I didn't know the "authorities" would be perturbed and start to "come after me". If they want me, just say so. I would gladly "submit" myself, ass first for a spank and then perhaps a full frontal rub-down? I just hope it is some gorgeous hunk with big strong hands from the Prisons department doing this. I wouldn't have this any other way.
More sinister were the people who kept cropping up in my life. The litany reads like a who's who list of the rich and famous. I swear they were all joined by red dots forming the exact same picture - a picture of anti-me conspiritorial theory.
They were there where I usually hung out. They were there again when I moved away.I could see them from the deep corner of my eyes. You should see who they were. They are everywhere.
So if someone walk right up to me and asked what I thought of so-and-so in you-know-where, I just smile, pretend I am stupefied and mutter: "Hey! What is your problem? I luv them all. If you don't, you need a psychiatrist."
Doesn't mean if there are some red-necks that a red-neck yankee doodle place we make, right? Right? If you ain't happy, you should just stand up and say so. Download all your trash onto them. Don't go unloading on poor me who is just a modicum of a political awarist.
I just want to get on with my life. Is that so hard to understand? What is with all the political stuff anyway? Doesn't strike any chord with me. Try someone else.
As things are, I am already weary and wary of one and all. I am just having a little fun here scripting and blogging, lay off ok. It is the only outlet for my creative expression. You have a problem with that and you may as well have problems with nuclear proliferation prohibition.
Do you have that same feeling I have? Join the club, brudder - we are being watched!
Eversince I started blogging and having "contact" with the outside world, I began to feel eyes moving behind me, on my arse and on my johnny. It was like the Gahmen was despising me, hating me, hounding me even for all the inane remarks and scripting I have been making.
As I walked into the reading room for my morning digest of the daily news, "agents" surreptitiously planted by the state start to strike up conversations with me. They articulate some of my views exactly and seem to know what I am thinking and knowing. They try to suss out information.
On every little path I make my way to, they try to extort, cajole and instigate. I ward and defend as best as I could. I did not want to be caught in any way mouthing anything against the state. That would have been capital death with a capital C, political murder and suicide.
While peeing in the urinals, I had to be careful not to stare too hard and long at the next guy in the other urinal with his pants pulled low and undies gone and a hard dick sticking out, spouting a fountain of wealth. I would have normally reached over and peeked or stretch a hand out to touch. That is now a complete no-no.
I had to maintain a steady, straight ahead gaze, devoid of emotions or feelings.
It was after all an innocuous script I penned about a metaphorical war with a multi-ethnic and multi-national flavor. I didn't know the "authorities" would be perturbed and start to "come after me". If they want me, just say so. I would gladly "submit" myself, ass first for a spank and then perhaps a full frontal rub-down? I just hope it is some gorgeous hunk with big strong hands from the Prisons department doing this. I wouldn't have this any other way.
More sinister were the people who kept cropping up in my life. The litany reads like a who's who list of the rich and famous. I swear they were all joined by red dots forming the exact same picture - a picture of anti-me conspiritorial theory.
They were there where I usually hung out. They were there again when I moved away.I could see them from the deep corner of my eyes. You should see who they were. They are everywhere.
So if someone walk right up to me and asked what I thought of so-and-so in you-know-where, I just smile, pretend I am stupefied and mutter: "Hey! What is your problem? I luv them all. If you don't, you need a psychiatrist."
Doesn't mean if there are some red-necks that a red-neck yankee doodle place we make, right? Right? If you ain't happy, you should just stand up and say so. Download all your trash onto them. Don't go unloading on poor me who is just a modicum of a political awarist.
I just want to get on with my life. Is that so hard to understand? What is with all the political stuff anyway? Doesn't strike any chord with me. Try someone else.
As things are, I am already weary and wary of one and all. I am just having a little fun here scripting and blogging, lay off ok. It is the only outlet for my creative expression. You have a problem with that and you may as well have problems with nuclear proliferation prohibition.
Do you have that same feeling I have? Join the club, brudder - we are being watched!
Monday, September 19, 2005
Get Real!
After having read my blogs, you must think I am a weeping willow of sorts. I did weep for a number of people and on a few occasions as you care to recall. If you have a prickly problem with that, I suggest you dunk your gonads in sulphuric acid. That way they taste sour and anyone wishing to have a bite out of them will want to think twice.
And all that jazz about articulating the FANE and NWO are I suppose in a realist's lingo, just pure whimsical fancy and wishful thinking. Knowing how the UN is in its rather ineffectual way, I may do better selling someone's testicles for food on the streets of Uighur.
I think the whole world must have heard of my insane suggestion. I just have this queasy feeling whenver I am in public places that people are watching me and laughing behind my back. Worse, I fear I may be watched by the Gahmen and Interpol, for whatever they are worth.
Bimbo A: Hey look! Isn't that the author of the FANE and NWO thingtummy sitting in the corner, bimboting? Hey Mr FANE and NWO, I will have you know you had me in stitches reading your sci-fi stuff on the new world order (at this juncture, M/s Bimbo breaks into a bimbotic laugh herself)
That swine! I swear I would have stood up, flashed my dick at her (not a very pretty sight) and cuss her navel to its eternal damnation.
Today, I was like sprawling myself on the sofa and what do you know, three replicas of the "blimp,bimb and wimp" (BBW, not BBQ as in skewered chicken rumps on a grill ....muahahahahah...get it? You don't? You silly comatose wit of a slut you! Get a brain transplant. Seriously it helps and then some....muahahaha ) of an earlier blog appeared before me, squarely facing me in the opposite bench. They were symbolic on the one hand and admonishing on the other. Talk about recurring nightmare! Even Freddy Kruger couldn't have scared the living daylights out of Shirley Temple.
I was happily chomping on a McDonald's gorgeous Grilled Chicken Foldover (how I wished they make all chickens that way - fold over) when people of all mannerisms kept popping up like cats on heat. It was like I was attracting a horde of horny dudes waiting to have a go at me. They just couldn't wait their turn. Don't they know I have a long waiting list with names from Ali Ahmad to Zul Brzenick?
A couple of delectable wimps and not so delicious bimbs, giggled over our popular local magazine, ogling, as it were, of all things, Adam Chen. A SAFSA rugby dude was so tanned and manly, I swear I could have jumped up and hugged him to death, smothering him with my hot lips.
A few groups of yummy school-going teeny-boopers were showing off their hair, dye , studs and attitude, with hot looks to boot. Hmmmm, just ripe for the taking......Wonder if it would taste as crispy though?
What a feast for the wimpy eyes I had! I was like masticating food and burped a few times when indigestibility hit me in the ileum as parade after parade of hunks, chunks and bunks passed me by. I was like the Yellow Emperor in his harlem of tempestuous harlots, choking on his semenic vomit, yet not willing to slurp up "Kaolin" (no colored or structural allegorical references here, if you do imagine it, it is just yours, not mine) to cure myself of the "disease".
One was slim and curvaceously muscled, with Japanese manga hair and a slight goatee
turf to accentuate his pop-star look and accentuated body clad in body-hugging tights. His glazed looks bowl you over because you imagine him to be a soft, cuddly and subservient play toy!
At the train tracks, a rippling muscular dude was temptatiously tantalising me with his brooding good looks and bulging biceps. I had an erection just sitting next to him, whiffing up his intoxicating breath and seductive chunk of a hunk stature.
I was thinking up a few pick-up-go-home-and-wham lines like:
Me: Excuse me! Your fly is sticking out. You need help....
Me: Dude, hi..I am from China. I like your looks, muscles and that seriously bulging whopper of your manhood. Care to ****?
Me: Do you have change for my fare? You don't? Ok why dont I ride on you and we go home to my place? I could always return you your fare there?
God, I wished I could bed one and have hot sweltering sex with him.
And all that jazz about articulating the FANE and NWO are I suppose in a realist's lingo, just pure whimsical fancy and wishful thinking. Knowing how the UN is in its rather ineffectual way, I may do better selling someone's testicles for food on the streets of Uighur.
I think the whole world must have heard of my insane suggestion. I just have this queasy feeling whenver I am in public places that people are watching me and laughing behind my back. Worse, I fear I may be watched by the Gahmen and Interpol, for whatever they are worth.
Bimbo A: Hey look! Isn't that the author of the FANE and NWO thingtummy sitting in the corner, bimboting? Hey Mr FANE and NWO, I will have you know you had me in stitches reading your sci-fi stuff on the new world order (at this juncture, M/s Bimbo breaks into a bimbotic laugh herself)
That swine! I swear I would have stood up, flashed my dick at her (not a very pretty sight) and cuss her navel to its eternal damnation.
Today, I was like sprawling myself on the sofa and what do you know, three replicas of the "blimp,bimb and wimp" (BBW, not BBQ as in skewered chicken rumps on a grill ....muahahahahah...get it? You don't? You silly comatose wit of a slut you! Get a brain transplant. Seriously it helps and then some....muahahaha ) of an earlier blog appeared before me, squarely facing me in the opposite bench. They were symbolic on the one hand and admonishing on the other. Talk about recurring nightmare! Even Freddy Kruger couldn't have scared the living daylights out of Shirley Temple.
I was happily chomping on a McDonald's gorgeous Grilled Chicken Foldover (how I wished they make all chickens that way - fold over) when people of all mannerisms kept popping up like cats on heat. It was like I was attracting a horde of horny dudes waiting to have a go at me. They just couldn't wait their turn. Don't they know I have a long waiting list with names from Ali Ahmad to Zul Brzenick?
A couple of delectable wimps and not so delicious bimbs, giggled over our popular local magazine, ogling, as it were, of all things, Adam Chen. A SAFSA rugby dude was so tanned and manly, I swear I could have jumped up and hugged him to death, smothering him with my hot lips.
A few groups of yummy school-going teeny-boopers were showing off their hair, dye , studs and attitude, with hot looks to boot. Hmmmm, just ripe for the taking......Wonder if it would taste as crispy though?
What a feast for the wimpy eyes I had! I was like masticating food and burped a few times when indigestibility hit me in the ileum as parade after parade of hunks, chunks and bunks passed me by. I was like the Yellow Emperor in his harlem of tempestuous harlots, choking on his semenic vomit, yet not willing to slurp up "Kaolin" (no colored or structural allegorical references here, if you do imagine it, it is just yours, not mine) to cure myself of the "disease".
One was slim and curvaceously muscled, with Japanese manga hair and a slight goatee
turf to accentuate his pop-star look and accentuated body clad in body-hugging tights. His glazed looks bowl you over because you imagine him to be a soft, cuddly and subservient play toy!
At the train tracks, a rippling muscular dude was temptatiously tantalising me with his brooding good looks and bulging biceps. I had an erection just sitting next to him, whiffing up his intoxicating breath and seductive chunk of a hunk stature.
I was thinking up a few pick-up-go-home-and-wham lines like:
Me: Excuse me! Your fly is sticking out. You need help....
Me: Dude, hi..I am from China. I like your looks, muscles and that seriously bulging whopper of your manhood. Care to ****?
Me: Do you have change for my fare? You don't? Ok why dont I ride on you and we go home to my place? I could always return you your fare there?
God, I wished I could bed one and have hot sweltering sex with him.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
FANE And NWO Re-Enunciated
When I was a kid, the naturally philosophical me, was so fascinated by moving clouds in the sky, I could spend a better part of the day staring into outer space. I did the same with the moon and the stars on a clear summer's night.
When I was tasked to write a poem, it was again the philosophical me taking hold, musing of all the darnations, happenings on the world stage, a versification aptly titled "Why". I had a cut-out of a dreamy girl, leaning on her chin, pasted atop my little masterpiece.
I was intrigued and mystified with the wars going on then, especially the Arab-Jew conflict. It was like almost every other day that you read and hear of a limb or a body blown to bits or something like that in that cross-fire of war. I told myself I was going to make sense of all the world's sagas and I have in most cases and am about to for the Palestine-Israeli conundrum.
I supposed if I had started life this way, I should end this way too. By first questioning and contemplating life's mysteries, so too should I unravel and solve life's complexities.
My form teacher commented that it probably wasn't such a swell idea to question too much. He was both right and wrong. He was right in that many of the world's undoings are seemingly unsolvable. He was wrong in that it took questioning to unravel mysteries, crack puzzles and to reinforce the rigors of science through debates.
Socrates, the Sophists, the whole Greco-Roman philosophers took the same route in life. They walked along the beach, saw the heap of animals crawling by, looked up into the stars, moon, sun and clouds and voila, natural philosophy was born. Science followed.
Unfortunately for us, we have reached the stage of our "progress" where we are saddled and limping along with our own self-imposed encumbrances and burdens. If we had been smarter and only stuck to seeking ourselves from whence we came, we would have been right on track. But oh no, we had to complicate and complexify things.
Reading into how the world today is divided along so many civilisational, economic and political fault lines, and how if we don't kill ourselves inter-civilisationally, economically or environmentally first before God steps in, I can only have one prognosis - and that is to go the way of the Free and Natural Economy and the New World Order.
The FANE as its name suggests, returns the freedom and power to man again as it did with his Stoneman prehistoric ancestors. It allows man to live freely and naturally as he did, 99% of his time here on planet earth.
FANE eliminates the twin axes of evil, that of currency and nature-destruction. It is a free and natural economy. It is only so when money as currency and thus the root of all evil is done away with. It is natural when we produce and live in harmony with nature, not encroaching and destroying it.
The NWO does not define man religiously, linguistically, nationally nor does it racially, sexly or economically segregate. Every man is one - a person, an individual, a human being, a homo-sapien. We base our relationships on one sole measure of man and that is man himself - not his religion, race, nationality, language, gender, education, wealth or political beliefs. This is so like our prehistorical ancestry. We can keep the clothes on our back if we still want to.
There is no hate, no discrimination, no segregation, no strife, no nothing. Everyone is color-blind. We go to school learning everything and nothing. We visit churches, mosques and temples praying to everything and nothing. We form economic and political pacts, pledging allegiance to everything and nothing.
We should have tagged on to a scientific-anthropological finding of our common ancestry Out-Of-Africa. If culturally and religiously we can't connect, we should find the next best thing that binds us and that is our commonality in our human heritage.
Next in line would be the blood-ties and miscegenation we have intertwined our lives among society. Not forgetting our pluralistic manifestation on a micro-level where we could be of one race but of another religion or nationality which should cement us to our tribes just as well.
As if religion, race and language are not divisive enough, the economy is as equally if not more wedge-driving. Thus the FANE takes the sting out of this.
As it is, I have to look back over my shoulders, taking heed of my own unique personal history and so bewaring of the unholy triad of blimps (their baggages of history), bimbs (somehow rift-creating) and wimps (male versions of the bimbs). I just want to work, eat, drink, play, sleep, die and have sex naturally - all the pre-occupations of life that make us humankind.
I do not have to take umbrage at anyone's creed or whatever. Everyone and all is one and nothing. It is that single and simple. I want to be like a child on a blank slate and in a blank state - loving all, fearing nothing and discriminating none.
There is just one essential we need for the NWO to kick in : a self-sufficiency in energy, water, food, raw materials and national defence. How each nation-state is going to achieve this will be very much its technological innovation and ingenuity.
If ever I want to live out my life meaningfully, it will be to articulate the three prime theories of the FANE and NWO, a liberal arts education (which is a kinship of the science, technology and the arts) and the End of Man (the microbes and the arthropods will take over from us).
When I was tasked to write a poem, it was again the philosophical me taking hold, musing of all the darnations, happenings on the world stage, a versification aptly titled "Why". I had a cut-out of a dreamy girl, leaning on her chin, pasted atop my little masterpiece.
I was intrigued and mystified with the wars going on then, especially the Arab-Jew conflict. It was like almost every other day that you read and hear of a limb or a body blown to bits or something like that in that cross-fire of war. I told myself I was going to make sense of all the world's sagas and I have in most cases and am about to for the Palestine-Israeli conundrum.
I supposed if I had started life this way, I should end this way too. By first questioning and contemplating life's mysteries, so too should I unravel and solve life's complexities.
My form teacher commented that it probably wasn't such a swell idea to question too much. He was both right and wrong. He was right in that many of the world's undoings are seemingly unsolvable. He was wrong in that it took questioning to unravel mysteries, crack puzzles and to reinforce the rigors of science through debates.
Socrates, the Sophists, the whole Greco-Roman philosophers took the same route in life. They walked along the beach, saw the heap of animals crawling by, looked up into the stars, moon, sun and clouds and voila, natural philosophy was born. Science followed.
Unfortunately for us, we have reached the stage of our "progress" where we are saddled and limping along with our own self-imposed encumbrances and burdens. If we had been smarter and only stuck to seeking ourselves from whence we came, we would have been right on track. But oh no, we had to complicate and complexify things.
Reading into how the world today is divided along so many civilisational, economic and political fault lines, and how if we don't kill ourselves inter-civilisationally, economically or environmentally first before God steps in, I can only have one prognosis - and that is to go the way of the Free and Natural Economy and the New World Order.
The FANE as its name suggests, returns the freedom and power to man again as it did with his Stoneman prehistoric ancestors. It allows man to live freely and naturally as he did, 99% of his time here on planet earth.
FANE eliminates the twin axes of evil, that of currency and nature-destruction. It is a free and natural economy. It is only so when money as currency and thus the root of all evil is done away with. It is natural when we produce and live in harmony with nature, not encroaching and destroying it.
The NWO does not define man religiously, linguistically, nationally nor does it racially, sexly or economically segregate. Every man is one - a person, an individual, a human being, a homo-sapien. We base our relationships on one sole measure of man and that is man himself - not his religion, race, nationality, language, gender, education, wealth or political beliefs. This is so like our prehistorical ancestry. We can keep the clothes on our back if we still want to.
There is no hate, no discrimination, no segregation, no strife, no nothing. Everyone is color-blind. We go to school learning everything and nothing. We visit churches, mosques and temples praying to everything and nothing. We form economic and political pacts, pledging allegiance to everything and nothing.
We should have tagged on to a scientific-anthropological finding of our common ancestry Out-Of-Africa. If culturally and religiously we can't connect, we should find the next best thing that binds us and that is our commonality in our human heritage.
Next in line would be the blood-ties and miscegenation we have intertwined our lives among society. Not forgetting our pluralistic manifestation on a micro-level where we could be of one race but of another religion or nationality which should cement us to our tribes just as well.
As if religion, race and language are not divisive enough, the economy is as equally if not more wedge-driving. Thus the FANE takes the sting out of this.
As it is, I have to look back over my shoulders, taking heed of my own unique personal history and so bewaring of the unholy triad of blimps (their baggages of history), bimbs (somehow rift-creating) and wimps (male versions of the bimbs). I just want to work, eat, drink, play, sleep, die and have sex naturally - all the pre-occupations of life that make us humankind.
I do not have to take umbrage at anyone's creed or whatever. Everyone and all is one and nothing. It is that single and simple. I want to be like a child on a blank slate and in a blank state - loving all, fearing nothing and discriminating none.
There is just one essential we need for the NWO to kick in : a self-sufficiency in energy, water, food, raw materials and national defence. How each nation-state is going to achieve this will be very much its technological innovation and ingenuity.
If ever I want to live out my life meaningfully, it will be to articulate the three prime theories of the FANE and NWO, a liberal arts education (which is a kinship of the science, technology and the arts) and the End of Man (the microbes and the arthropods will take over from us).
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Where Do I Stand and Go From Here?
Good philosophical poser.
The answer is: How the heck do I know? Why did Socrates and the whole bunch of armchair philosophers ever started this thinking and creating thingy?
It is not as if like I am equipped to take on the problems of the world which man created and induced all by himself, the smarty pants that he is.
If they want me to solve them, pay me. It is like one minute I am like strolling down a back alley, tugging along a bag of groceries, whistling my ass off , breathing in the smelly and polluted air and the next, brass rivets start pelting down and an entire window frame crashes on me. I am only an innocent bystander, not the builder of the window frame.
After I had picked myself up, dusted off the debris, I certainly have to hunt down the perpetrator of this dastardly crime. I did not go looking for trouble. Matter of fact, I wished I had never got myself in any of this sticky situation. It just happened. It seems like I just walk into a web spun by a black widow and got tangled in its vicious snare.
But when it did, I have to snoop into its cause, usually sniffing out the causators but somehow the causators can't see them as the problem causing it.
Case in point, the continuing saga of AIT Academy. It got itself into the Student Protection Scheme, which was meant to protect the students - their lives and their fees. So how is it that it can't return the fees anymore to its students? Wasn't the scheme meant to do that? What went wrong? Did someone lose his pituitary gland and wasn't thinking deep enough when they came up with the half-baked scheme?
The scheme was originally intended to accredit curriculum, protect students and teachers. In some "road to hell paved with good intentions" perversion, it came out all wrong.
As someone looking in from the outside, I could see things quite visibly and palpably. Not so with the protagonists and antagonists caught in its dramatic suspense. Their visions cloud over and stupefication holds.
It is ironic that as someone who embraces technological advancement, globalisation and lifelong learning that I should be the first to be left behind. Either I am well ahead of the times or someone in hell seriously wants me bad enough to wreak havoc with my life.
I am willing to slog my ass off and learn new things. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't gamble, I don't womanise and I don't whine. I am open, receptive, loving, compassionate, welcoming to one and all. I do not discriminate , engage in rumour-mongering nor do I bear tales. I can be funny, witty and bitchy, all within the same breath. But never the malicious kind.
What would be a motivating and meaningful life would be engaging the world on internationalism, all the while sussing out opportunities in the arts, the humanities, the sciences, the social sciences, trade and commerce.
I would love to be among the international community, be among the scientific, the academic and the arts communities. Diversity and the best of minds. Hear their views, see their cultures, cultivate relationships and see the world. Be at the frontier of cutting edge arts and sciences.
I would love to be involved with education, training and development. Engage youths and the old in sports, community work, arts and education. Work on counselling, charity work and home visits to bring life and meaning to all
At the end of the road, I need to pay off my liabilities and build enough assets to see me through my own geriatric years. It would be nice if this could be in the suburbs, with some greenery laced with water so as to feed my soul, my imagination and my life. In other words, my profund love of nature, the sciences and the arts.
At the same time, my kinship could benefit from my assets and I could live out my dying years with "someone" (of the same gender, thank you very much) and an "adopted" son.
My life is as simple as that. Why is everyone begrudging me of this? Is this too much to ask for in life? Am I asking for the world or am I just being me? Is everyone so wrapped up in their world, they can't tell the difference between dreams and ambition anymore?
The answer is: How the heck do I know? Why did Socrates and the whole bunch of armchair philosophers ever started this thinking and creating thingy?
It is not as if like I am equipped to take on the problems of the world which man created and induced all by himself, the smarty pants that he is.
If they want me to solve them, pay me. It is like one minute I am like strolling down a back alley, tugging along a bag of groceries, whistling my ass off , breathing in the smelly and polluted air and the next, brass rivets start pelting down and an entire window frame crashes on me. I am only an innocent bystander, not the builder of the window frame.
After I had picked myself up, dusted off the debris, I certainly have to hunt down the perpetrator of this dastardly crime. I did not go looking for trouble. Matter of fact, I wished I had never got myself in any of this sticky situation. It just happened. It seems like I just walk into a web spun by a black widow and got tangled in its vicious snare.
But when it did, I have to snoop into its cause, usually sniffing out the causators but somehow the causators can't see them as the problem causing it.
Case in point, the continuing saga of AIT Academy. It got itself into the Student Protection Scheme, which was meant to protect the students - their lives and their fees. So how is it that it can't return the fees anymore to its students? Wasn't the scheme meant to do that? What went wrong? Did someone lose his pituitary gland and wasn't thinking deep enough when they came up with the half-baked scheme?
The scheme was originally intended to accredit curriculum, protect students and teachers. In some "road to hell paved with good intentions" perversion, it came out all wrong.
As someone looking in from the outside, I could see things quite visibly and palpably. Not so with the protagonists and antagonists caught in its dramatic suspense. Their visions cloud over and stupefication holds.
It is ironic that as someone who embraces technological advancement, globalisation and lifelong learning that I should be the first to be left behind. Either I am well ahead of the times or someone in hell seriously wants me bad enough to wreak havoc with my life.
I am willing to slog my ass off and learn new things. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't gamble, I don't womanise and I don't whine. I am open, receptive, loving, compassionate, welcoming to one and all. I do not discriminate , engage in rumour-mongering nor do I bear tales. I can be funny, witty and bitchy, all within the same breath. But never the malicious kind.
What would be a motivating and meaningful life would be engaging the world on internationalism, all the while sussing out opportunities in the arts, the humanities, the sciences, the social sciences, trade and commerce.
I would love to be among the international community, be among the scientific, the academic and the arts communities. Diversity and the best of minds. Hear their views, see their cultures, cultivate relationships and see the world. Be at the frontier of cutting edge arts and sciences.
I would love to be involved with education, training and development. Engage youths and the old in sports, community work, arts and education. Work on counselling, charity work and home visits to bring life and meaning to all
At the end of the road, I need to pay off my liabilities and build enough assets to see me through my own geriatric years. It would be nice if this could be in the suburbs, with some greenery laced with water so as to feed my soul, my imagination and my life. In other words, my profund love of nature, the sciences and the arts.
At the same time, my kinship could benefit from my assets and I could live out my dying years with "someone" (of the same gender, thank you very much) and an "adopted" son.
My life is as simple as that. Why is everyone begrudging me of this? Is this too much to ask for in life? Am I asking for the world or am I just being me? Is everyone so wrapped up in their world, they can't tell the difference between dreams and ambition anymore?
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Final Quips Before Quitting The FANE
Before I make my last quip revisiting yet again the Free and Natural Economy, I would like to just rattle off a whole list of stuff that has made me think deep and hard.
Sometimes, I feel like Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" Boo Radley. At other times, I feel myself being Victor Hugo's "Hunchback of Notre Dame". A mixed bag of alienation and ex-communication. Of despair, being unloved, un-understood, different , Frankenstein freakishly monsterous and ugly. The world has not made living any easier, with its undue emphasis on "cultural norms and beauty".
In our educational imperialism, we have dictated "character development" programs as a must for all our school-going people. I wonder how if this is turned backwards and instead the proponents prove themselves as characterally developed, much as they unfairly and onerously propel this cannon ball onto the turf of their charges.
For a start, sell all their cars and start walking or taking the public transport system. Why do I see rows upon rows of gleaming new cars in the school parking lot, only ridden at two peak periods of the day, before and after school? What a needless waste of precious resources! What an environmental impact we would make if we go green!
Go hungry, fast for days, weeks and months. Have one meal a day like I do. Do without creature comforts like the air-conditioner at home. Better still, do without a maid. Give up your cushy, well-paying job which you took from the people anyway.
You mean we paid you so you could pay yourself, lord over us and make our lives miserable? You lowly life-forms of the Gandalf clan.
If you had done your job well, we never would have private commercialised tutorials sprouting up like mushrooms on a spore spree, would we?
Oh yes. To think that when I gun down an investor, I am accused of free-loading. And soliciting for donations is not? In fact my investor gets a return on his money while a donation only earns a tax exemption, provided it is approved as tax-deductible, that is.
I have seen my single lady neighbor living in the lap of luxury with a maid waiting on hand and foot. The other neighbor strikes me as a spoilt, richie rich, brat who still has the maid , wife and mother doing the laundry and cooking for him.
Do we seriously at times say something but feel another. Sample these:
False outer utterance : How are you? Haven't seen you for some time now. How have you been?
Real inner voice: You mean you are still alive, you slimeball. I thought you had been incarcerated in Siberia and will never return to civilisation again.
FOU: Could you please pass me the salt , dear?
RIV: What in darnation? Why are you hoarding the salt, you moron?
FOU: I love you to death, honey. Muak. You are the reason I live today and tommorrow.
RIV: Drop dead, you son of a whore. Get a life and I wished we were never hitched. I had to put up with Nubi your dog and your snores all day and night.
Last critique that keeps popping up in my head regarding the free and natural economy. And hopefully the last.
Last critique: Give me supporting evidence why this economy will work and I will be your loyal advocate of the FANE.
Answer: In economic history, we already have a good starting point to show how this can work. When we first economised, we had physical gold as a means of trade. That meant lugging cumbersome, wieldy and asinide gold bars for exchange. But we switched to paper as a IOU which eventually had a fraction of its value put up as collateral. Today, paper and mint currency have been accepted as prima facie media of trade and commerce. Likewise, doing without money currency will be the same. It becomes a mere matter of book-keeping and mental calculation without the tangible physical currency being ever changed hands. What is best is that with a base index, we never devalue or revalue its worth. It is a stable, non-fluctuating virtual currency. All it needs for it to work is for world acceptance and collaboration, all 193 nations that we are made up.
Last and final critique: But what are you doing to economics, the economists (that dear author who fucked us in Freaknomics in particular) and economic theory in general?
Answer: Surprisingly a very good academic question. Economics will continue as it is being taught, albeit as history but especially espousing this new theory. Economists will function as they are doing now. Economic theory will become both historical and momentous while at the same time futurist. Adam Smith can go to hell with his "Wealth of Nations" and economic scarcity and the theory of diminishing returns will be replaced by the Law of Boundless Plentiful made possible by Efficient Re-allocation and distribution coupled with the demise of currency. In short man live life to the hilt meaningfully with no ugly side effects such as displacement or dislocation.
Ok ok, ultimate critique, I am so sorry for fielding so many questions: What is your final word on the FANE?
Answer: With the FANE, you must remember that the obliteration of currency is only one of two interlinked jigsaws to fit a puzzle. The other is the natural economy which has to kick in for us to save our earth and our lives. With FANE, nobody controls the world anymore, not Soros, not any government, not even you and me. We have plugged ourselves into American politicism, economism and socio-culturalism and so too we can plug ourselves out. All the current backlashes has one and only one defining trait - the evil twin axes of money as currency and the destruction of earth. Once FANE is in place, we are saved.
So there, what do economists and world central bankers think of my FANE model? Or the Supermarkets and Electronic Herds. Neat, nice and a befitting theory?Good, go on, try it. This is certainly no Eve's sinful and amoral urging. We will see the return of paradise once more.
Sometimes, I feel like Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" Boo Radley. At other times, I feel myself being Victor Hugo's "Hunchback of Notre Dame". A mixed bag of alienation and ex-communication. Of despair, being unloved, un-understood, different , Frankenstein freakishly monsterous and ugly. The world has not made living any easier, with its undue emphasis on "cultural norms and beauty".
In our educational imperialism, we have dictated "character development" programs as a must for all our school-going people. I wonder how if this is turned backwards and instead the proponents prove themselves as characterally developed, much as they unfairly and onerously propel this cannon ball onto the turf of their charges.
For a start, sell all their cars and start walking or taking the public transport system. Why do I see rows upon rows of gleaming new cars in the school parking lot, only ridden at two peak periods of the day, before and after school? What a needless waste of precious resources! What an environmental impact we would make if we go green!
Go hungry, fast for days, weeks and months. Have one meal a day like I do. Do without creature comforts like the air-conditioner at home. Better still, do without a maid. Give up your cushy, well-paying job which you took from the people anyway.
You mean we paid you so you could pay yourself, lord over us and make our lives miserable? You lowly life-forms of the Gandalf clan.
If you had done your job well, we never would have private commercialised tutorials sprouting up like mushrooms on a spore spree, would we?
Oh yes. To think that when I gun down an investor, I am accused of free-loading. And soliciting for donations is not? In fact my investor gets a return on his money while a donation only earns a tax exemption, provided it is approved as tax-deductible, that is.
I have seen my single lady neighbor living in the lap of luxury with a maid waiting on hand and foot. The other neighbor strikes me as a spoilt, richie rich, brat who still has the maid , wife and mother doing the laundry and cooking for him.
Do we seriously at times say something but feel another. Sample these:
False outer utterance : How are you? Haven't seen you for some time now. How have you been?
Real inner voice: You mean you are still alive, you slimeball. I thought you had been incarcerated in Siberia and will never return to civilisation again.
FOU: Could you please pass me the salt , dear?
RIV: What in darnation? Why are you hoarding the salt, you moron?
FOU: I love you to death, honey. Muak. You are the reason I live today and tommorrow.
RIV: Drop dead, you son of a whore. Get a life and I wished we were never hitched. I had to put up with Nubi your dog and your snores all day and night.
Last critique that keeps popping up in my head regarding the free and natural economy. And hopefully the last.
Last critique: Give me supporting evidence why this economy will work and I will be your loyal advocate of the FANE.
Answer: In economic history, we already have a good starting point to show how this can work. When we first economised, we had physical gold as a means of trade. That meant lugging cumbersome, wieldy and asinide gold bars for exchange. But we switched to paper as a IOU which eventually had a fraction of its value put up as collateral. Today, paper and mint currency have been accepted as prima facie media of trade and commerce. Likewise, doing without money currency will be the same. It becomes a mere matter of book-keeping and mental calculation without the tangible physical currency being ever changed hands. What is best is that with a base index, we never devalue or revalue its worth. It is a stable, non-fluctuating virtual currency. All it needs for it to work is for world acceptance and collaboration, all 193 nations that we are made up.
Last and final critique: But what are you doing to economics, the economists (that dear author who fucked us in Freaknomics in particular) and economic theory in general?
Answer: Surprisingly a very good academic question. Economics will continue as it is being taught, albeit as history but especially espousing this new theory. Economists will function as they are doing now. Economic theory will become both historical and momentous while at the same time futurist. Adam Smith can go to hell with his "Wealth of Nations" and economic scarcity and the theory of diminishing returns will be replaced by the Law of Boundless Plentiful made possible by Efficient Re-allocation and distribution coupled with the demise of currency. In short man live life to the hilt meaningfully with no ugly side effects such as displacement or dislocation.
Ok ok, ultimate critique, I am so sorry for fielding so many questions: What is your final word on the FANE?
Answer: With the FANE, you must remember that the obliteration of currency is only one of two interlinked jigsaws to fit a puzzle. The other is the natural economy which has to kick in for us to save our earth and our lives. With FANE, nobody controls the world anymore, not Soros, not any government, not even you and me. We have plugged ourselves into American politicism, economism and socio-culturalism and so too we can plug ourselves out. All the current backlashes has one and only one defining trait - the evil twin axes of money as currency and the destruction of earth. Once FANE is in place, we are saved.
So there, what do economists and world central bankers think of my FANE model? Or the Supermarkets and Electronic Herds. Neat, nice and a befitting theory?Good, go on, try it. This is certainly no Eve's sinful and amoral urging. We will see the return of paradise once more.
Monday, September 12, 2005
The Free And Natural Economy Revisited
By now I must be a madman by any definition. Charles Darwin was mad. Galileo was mad. So too was our caped crusader. By jingo, they all made a difference.
If you had noticed my earlier blogs where I and I alone spoke to me and me alone, don't be alarmed. Galileo did the same with his Helio-Centros tome in Italian. It is called dialogism where divergent views are presented.
Before I forget, I will like to mention that Albert Einstein had been falsely accused of perpetrating the crime of the nuclear holocaust with his atomic energy equation. I will just like to defend the poor and dead fella by saying that he happened to be one of a long line of people who in the end put two and two together and came up with E=mc2.The Curies and Wilhelm Rontgen all did their little bit too. So did the Manhanttan Project and Emperor Hirohito.
And yes I forgot to mention that we imported the American business model and economy, right along Hollywood and McDonalds. So too we went along with the roller-coaster. When it hit high, we went high. When it hit low, we slumped as well.
Busily buzzing in my head are voices telling me that I am so mad with ever propounding a free and natural economy that I should subject myself to castration so my wild oats can never ever be seeded.
This "inner voice" incidentally reminded me of many similar episodes in history where movers and shakers heard voices. If this isn't hallucination, then what is? George Bush riding a tricycle and doing an acrobatic stunt? Some voice hearers included Joan of Arc and Moses.
These critical voices, probably lisping as well, could typically belong to the female gender. But as phantasmic virtuality, I cannot precisely detect electromagnetic dopples to confirm their entities.
Anyway here goes some of those inner critiques:
Critique 1: Oh. Fiddlesticks. You ain't seriously suggesting that we could ever do away with money as a tangible currency for our exchanges now, can you? You are either off your rockers or I am stuck in an elevator, claustrophobic and trembling.
Answer: Look lady. Just because you are stuck in an elevator with thirteen other hot dudes with sweaty palms and big groins, doesn't mean you can take it out on me and swear to God you are saner than Idi Amin. History has shown that we did without money for a greater part of our lives. We even had cowry shells and the whole other works as media of exchanges. So please, lighten up!
Critique 2: How on earth are we ever gonna get used to not having money? I mean we need it as physically as we need sex, ain't we?
Answer: Our trade cycle has gone on naturally as it has for some time now. All I am suggesting is that we ain't gonna miss a beat even if we took money out of the entire cycle of trade. We ain't gonna miss it as much as we ain't gonna miss cockroaches or mice as food. We will just go on as usual.
Critique 3: Now how is that possible in the light of our account keeping and the need for adjustment to year on year price fluctuation?
Answer: Good question. I am glad you asked. Nobody usually does which shows the state of cryogenesis we all are in our current conditions of living. We can do it mentally in our heads like we do when we do mental calculation. We can take a base year, say 2006, fixed all our transactional prices as that and our trading cycle doesn't skip a step at all. It goes on and on, perpetually. The only difference is we don't see money anymore. We keep our balances in our heads or if we prefer on paper.And guess what? No more inflation, deflation and stagflation. We will buy and sell as we always do. Money has become defunct, valueless and meaningless. If you are hoarding hard cash now, you might as well burn them up as hell money for offerings to your ancestors. Because when the free and natural economy kicks in, we only have money exchange as a product of our imagination. Just as color is a product of light and vision. In other words, a figment of our mind, an illusion, a virtuality. Do you get it?
How's that for quashing critical critiques and skepticism. I hope you are convinced. If you ain't, just brace yourself for becoming as extinct as Papa Joe and his 8 incher dildo.
Neil Armstrong and Oprah Winfrey have shown the way. There were all round disbelief and incredulity when moon exploration and black women making it big were realities as real as wanking six times a day.
Trust me. The free and natural economy will see the light of day as soon as the dickheads controlling the world wake up one morning to find that Hurricane Katrina has blown their roofs off their houses.
That is when they will shuffle to the washroom, stare themselves silly in the mirror and wished they had heeded the seminal signposts earlier.
If you had noticed my earlier blogs where I and I alone spoke to me and me alone, don't be alarmed. Galileo did the same with his Helio-Centros tome in Italian. It is called dialogism where divergent views are presented.
Before I forget, I will like to mention that Albert Einstein had been falsely accused of perpetrating the crime of the nuclear holocaust with his atomic energy equation. I will just like to defend the poor and dead fella by saying that he happened to be one of a long line of people who in the end put two and two together and came up with E=mc2.The Curies and Wilhelm Rontgen all did their little bit too. So did the Manhanttan Project and Emperor Hirohito.
And yes I forgot to mention that we imported the American business model and economy, right along Hollywood and McDonalds. So too we went along with the roller-coaster. When it hit high, we went high. When it hit low, we slumped as well.
Busily buzzing in my head are voices telling me that I am so mad with ever propounding a free and natural economy that I should subject myself to castration so my wild oats can never ever be seeded.
This "inner voice" incidentally reminded me of many similar episodes in history where movers and shakers heard voices. If this isn't hallucination, then what is? George Bush riding a tricycle and doing an acrobatic stunt? Some voice hearers included Joan of Arc and Moses.
These critical voices, probably lisping as well, could typically belong to the female gender. But as phantasmic virtuality, I cannot precisely detect electromagnetic dopples to confirm their entities.
Anyway here goes some of those inner critiques:
Critique 1: Oh. Fiddlesticks. You ain't seriously suggesting that we could ever do away with money as a tangible currency for our exchanges now, can you? You are either off your rockers or I am stuck in an elevator, claustrophobic and trembling.
Answer: Look lady. Just because you are stuck in an elevator with thirteen other hot dudes with sweaty palms and big groins, doesn't mean you can take it out on me and swear to God you are saner than Idi Amin. History has shown that we did without money for a greater part of our lives. We even had cowry shells and the whole other works as media of exchanges. So please, lighten up!
Critique 2: How on earth are we ever gonna get used to not having money? I mean we need it as physically as we need sex, ain't we?
Answer: Our trade cycle has gone on naturally as it has for some time now. All I am suggesting is that we ain't gonna miss a beat even if we took money out of the entire cycle of trade. We ain't gonna miss it as much as we ain't gonna miss cockroaches or mice as food. We will just go on as usual.
Critique 3: Now how is that possible in the light of our account keeping and the need for adjustment to year on year price fluctuation?
Answer: Good question. I am glad you asked. Nobody usually does which shows the state of cryogenesis we all are in our current conditions of living. We can do it mentally in our heads like we do when we do mental calculation. We can take a base year, say 2006, fixed all our transactional prices as that and our trading cycle doesn't skip a step at all. It goes on and on, perpetually. The only difference is we don't see money anymore. We keep our balances in our heads or if we prefer on paper.And guess what? No more inflation, deflation and stagflation. We will buy and sell as we always do. Money has become defunct, valueless and meaningless. If you are hoarding hard cash now, you might as well burn them up as hell money for offerings to your ancestors. Because when the free and natural economy kicks in, we only have money exchange as a product of our imagination. Just as color is a product of light and vision. In other words, a figment of our mind, an illusion, a virtuality. Do you get it?
How's that for quashing critical critiques and skepticism. I hope you are convinced. If you ain't, just brace yourself for becoming as extinct as Papa Joe and his 8 incher dildo.
Neil Armstrong and Oprah Winfrey have shown the way. There were all round disbelief and incredulity when moon exploration and black women making it big were realities as real as wanking six times a day.
Trust me. The free and natural economy will see the light of day as soon as the dickheads controlling the world wake up one morning to find that Hurricane Katrina has blown their roofs off their houses.
That is when they will shuffle to the washroom, stare themselves silly in the mirror and wished they had heeded the seminal signposts earlier.
The End of Humans
The Book of Revelation reveals in vivid graphics Armagedon as it finally arrives.
Let me add my version of the last days of our lives on earth.
The sun suddenly blackens and burns itself out, dying in its final amber glow. The earth is plunged into pitch darkness. Streaks of lightning flash and zig-zag in the sky.
The world of the microbes, all the while submerged within 2 metres of geological earth covering the surface of the planet, breaks out and ravages mankind. We are gutted and eaten away, screaming in pain, the pain we inflicted all too often amongst ourselves.
The arthropods in the meantime rises and joins in the plunder.
The end of the century also sees the end of humans as a species. It is now the world of the other dominant animals in the kingdom.
Adious, Man. You have been given time and time again the chance to mend your destructive ways. But you blew it all away with your callous industry and killer end-products. Die in the heap of your own self-induced toxicity and venom!
Let me add my version of the last days of our lives on earth.
The sun suddenly blackens and burns itself out, dying in its final amber glow. The earth is plunged into pitch darkness. Streaks of lightning flash and zig-zag in the sky.
The world of the microbes, all the while submerged within 2 metres of geological earth covering the surface of the planet, breaks out and ravages mankind. We are gutted and eaten away, screaming in pain, the pain we inflicted all too often amongst ourselves.
The arthropods in the meantime rises and joins in the plunder.
The end of the century also sees the end of humans as a species. It is now the world of the other dominant animals in the kingdom.
Adious, Man. You have been given time and time again the chance to mend your destructive ways. But you blew it all away with your callous industry and killer end-products. Die in the heap of your own self-induced toxicity and venom!
The Rise And Fall Of Imelda Marcos
She was back in her home country once again to pay homage to the death anniversary of her husband, Ferdinand Marcos, the hated dictator who declared a state of martial law for two decades before the whole corrupt regime crumbled in the face of people power.
Thousands of pairs of shoes , a golden bath and a golden tap. An endless parade of riches and jewelleries. Billions of dollars pilfered, meant as foreign aid for her poor countrymen. A woman who rose from poverty to become the First Lady who ruled with an iron hand. A woman loved and hated.
When I read her biography, I was moved to tears by her humble and impoverished past. From aristocracy to poverty, she lived out her childhood in squalid conditions. A family torn apart by bickering parents and an acrimonious separation. A mother dead when she was no younger than 12 years old.
Snubbed by her richer relatives living in the city, she left the village seeking her fortunes. She ran into her future husband-to-be, a senator who aspired to the highest office in the country. She crawled on hands and knees to get to little known campaign municipalities. With dogged determination and unflappable spirit, she saw to it that Ferdinand became president. And he did.
To keep up her appearances of aristocratic heritage, she renounced her poor past, turning away from the people who nurtured and kept her alive in her indigent days. Which included a nanny who sacrificed much for her sake. This was the water-shed. Her sudden new found wealth and fame screwed her into indulging in heinous crimes, lavish lifestyles and grandious haughtiness.
It was also the beginning of their eventual downfall. A country wasted away by frivolous and careless fritters, mismanagement and total abandonment. Fuelled by the high life and revelries. The peasants paying with their sweat and blood the interminable and elaborate banquets and feasts.
How can someone who should have been imbued with a better sense of herself, learning from her sordid past, turned into a Frankenstein monster that only Mary Shelley can rave and rant about in her novel?
Imelda you have moved me to tears but you have also made me ashamed of you. This can only be the dualism and the psychological denial we all live in in today's world. A world of the rich and famous, oblivious to the outside world.
Give me the free and natural economy anytime and I will show you my two-pence worth of soda.
Thousands of pairs of shoes , a golden bath and a golden tap. An endless parade of riches and jewelleries. Billions of dollars pilfered, meant as foreign aid for her poor countrymen. A woman who rose from poverty to become the First Lady who ruled with an iron hand. A woman loved and hated.
When I read her biography, I was moved to tears by her humble and impoverished past. From aristocracy to poverty, she lived out her childhood in squalid conditions. A family torn apart by bickering parents and an acrimonious separation. A mother dead when she was no younger than 12 years old.
Snubbed by her richer relatives living in the city, she left the village seeking her fortunes. She ran into her future husband-to-be, a senator who aspired to the highest office in the country. She crawled on hands and knees to get to little known campaign municipalities. With dogged determination and unflappable spirit, she saw to it that Ferdinand became president. And he did.
To keep up her appearances of aristocratic heritage, she renounced her poor past, turning away from the people who nurtured and kept her alive in her indigent days. Which included a nanny who sacrificed much for her sake. This was the water-shed. Her sudden new found wealth and fame screwed her into indulging in heinous crimes, lavish lifestyles and grandious haughtiness.
It was also the beginning of their eventual downfall. A country wasted away by frivolous and careless fritters, mismanagement and total abandonment. Fuelled by the high life and revelries. The peasants paying with their sweat and blood the interminable and elaborate banquets and feasts.
How can someone who should have been imbued with a better sense of herself, learning from her sordid past, turned into a Frankenstein monster that only Mary Shelley can rave and rant about in her novel?
Imelda you have moved me to tears but you have also made me ashamed of you. This can only be the dualism and the psychological denial we all live in in today's world. A world of the rich and famous, oblivious to the outside world.
Give me the free and natural economy anytime and I will show you my two-pence worth of soda.
Louis, I Love You Always
This little boy stole my heart and balls away the moment I set my eyes on him. He is funny, cute, dramatic and smart. He has that awful sense of humor and twinkling eyes.
He is seemingly mischievous too. What do you expect of a 10 year old? A living, kicking, curious furball of hyper-activity. And who occasionally gets into trouble with the teachers for kicking a water-bottle around class. Hopefully the educators can see him for what he is at his age and take him in their stride.
I cannot imagine him to be a single-parented boy. I do not want to be tangled with either of his parentage. All I want is my special relationship with him. Hold his hands. Take him out for walks. Cuddle him. Read him bedtime stories. Clean him up. Prepare meals for him. Put him to sleep. Inculcate some sense of values in him. Influence him with my passion for my favourite subjects. Watch him grow up while I grow old. Be there when he needs me. Listen to him. Learn from him. Watch his antics and personality playing out.
But I cannot predict how our relationship will be when he turns older. I will leave him alone if he wants it that way.
I want him to grow up living out his talents and vocation for life. Opportunities that I must avail him to the best of my abilities.
For now while he is still in his childhood, I want him to cherish it with fond and loving memories.
I can't find him now. He is not here with me anymore. He never was. Can I ever find a "son" like him again, someone whom I will die and kill for. Who would ever want to hurt or abandon his own flesh and blood? Why bring him into this world if he is to suffer the injustices of the world, a world he was born into crying?
Louis, I will love you always.
He is seemingly mischievous too. What do you expect of a 10 year old? A living, kicking, curious furball of hyper-activity. And who occasionally gets into trouble with the teachers for kicking a water-bottle around class. Hopefully the educators can see him for what he is at his age and take him in their stride.
I cannot imagine him to be a single-parented boy. I do not want to be tangled with either of his parentage. All I want is my special relationship with him. Hold his hands. Take him out for walks. Cuddle him. Read him bedtime stories. Clean him up. Prepare meals for him. Put him to sleep. Inculcate some sense of values in him. Influence him with my passion for my favourite subjects. Watch him grow up while I grow old. Be there when he needs me. Listen to him. Learn from him. Watch his antics and personality playing out.
But I cannot predict how our relationship will be when he turns older. I will leave him alone if he wants it that way.
I want him to grow up living out his talents and vocation for life. Opportunities that I must avail him to the best of my abilities.
For now while he is still in his childhood, I want him to cherish it with fond and loving memories.
I can't find him now. He is not here with me anymore. He never was. Can I ever find a "son" like him again, someone whom I will die and kill for. Who would ever want to hurt or abandon his own flesh and blood? Why bring him into this world if he is to suffer the injustices of the world, a world he was born into crying?
Louis, I will love you always.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Who Am I?
Walt Whitman :"I am large. I am made up of multitudes."
What orthodox Anglo-Catholicism has done for me is that I am so mesmerized with all the parables of doing good, that I feel very strongly about what is morally right and wrong.
But when this cuts into my sexual identity and practices, I have to draw a line to keep them separate. I cannot be going for Confession for some self-gratifying acts all the time, can I? After all we have delineated sins into venial, mortal and cardinal sins.
I also have to take umbrage at the condemnations about people like us from the pew-speakers. I feel unwelcomed and ridden with guilt. Either I stay or leave. I also take it as a very ritualistic worship without much fellowship among the congregation inside or oustide the church.
I don't think my Chinese roots are as rooted as they should be. My father being Peranankan Hakka and my mother being a true-blue Chinese are schooled in "western" ways. They can speak English.
We celebrate Christmas in a bigger way with our religion rather than as Chinese for the New Year festival. The last vestiges of our Chinese practices must surely be the cooking of mee-sua with hard-boiled eggs for birthdays, the giving of red packets, new clothes and shoes, the reunion dinner and kow-towing to elders on New Year visits.
Being Asian Chinese, there is also the reticence we reserve , the giving of face and respect to authority. Like for our bosses , managers and the older folks. We do not want to talk back, question or ridicule. We keep silent as we think this will preserve the peace and not create unharmonius relationships. Generally we tolerate and hold our tongue.
Usually this may work against us. We are thought of as being uncommunicative, stupid, followers and as wall flowers to be plucked off and trampled upon. Even though we do seriously, deep within our hearts, know that what is said is wrong or flawed.
Which is why the American way of openness , frankness, rigorous debates and communication strike me as admirable traits. But in the Singaporean context, this may also work against us as we are seen to be rebellious, individualistic and disrespectful.
Being Chinese also means that I am intrigued with Chinese history and culture. I am curious , geographically and tribally, where my paternal and maternal bloodline hail . I want to be able to positionally pinpoint my genetic map in that whole big place called China.
Our Peranakan culture is also a unique fusion of Chinese and Malay dating back to Zheng He's voyage to Malacca with the handing over of a Chinese princess to a Malay sultan as a tributary gift. The sarong kebaya, our cuisine, our patois and our beaded handicraft are unrivalled anywhere in the world.
In school, I learnt of many famous Chinese heros and legends. Yue Fei and that endearing story of the Old Foolish Man Moving Mountains. Unfortunately I have not much acquaintance with ancient Chinese classics like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms but I am making up now by reading them in its original language, or more contemporary novelists like Ru Xun.
I am more familiar with Western literature and philosophy and American culture like Hollywood. America must surely be a prolific producer of many an epic like "The Sound of Music" and the like. And of course American pornography, fashion ,hip, hype and attitude. Not forgetting its self-concocted language in a class of its own like "duh" for instance.
Even Bollywood, Kollywood, Taiwanese, Japanese , Hongkong and our very own Singaporean movies are in many cases clones of American imports - the genres of love, comedy , thriller, romance or detective stories. The famous James Bond 007 theme must have been played over and over again on both the Eastern and Western hemispheres. The evergreen boy meet girl romances must also qualify as a recurring and thus banal episode amongst Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean movies.
I can only look to China for its many traditional folk art not to go the dodo bird way. Folk art like xiang sheng and the clapper recital of verses. Homogenisation is no fun if there isn't going to be a shred of distinct cultural preservation left.
So frankly I don't watch any Chinese movies or programs anymore save the occasional Hongkong slap-stick comedy of old just for laughs. I can still enjoy both English and Chinese pop songs, where the Chinese lyrics are somewhat penned more meaningfully. The English lyrics of old songs used to be written much more solidly too as compared to the babble we sometimes hear now. Except perhaps for the groovy beat or rhythm.
As for food, rice is still the staple but bread and noodles are options I retreat to once in a while.
Living in rules-bound Singapore has made us disciplined, good followers for the economy, law-abiding, civil but which can truly be nightmarish in other aspects like self-expression , being different or not adhering to a one-track system.
Miss a beat, dye your hair , sport long hair or tattoos and wear tinted glasses and you can seriously be had. The sytem can be harsh, unforgiving and strict. You could be associated with hippies, thugs or fashionistas.
Think "we are guilty untill proven innocent", quite like ass-backwards don't you think in the court of law?
Hollywood and the porn industry have also fuelled obsession with looks, fashion sense, sex and consumerism. Is it any wonder that to keep up with this beauty culture, plastic surgery is so rife and can I deny I wasn't anorexic or bulimic once too? I am glad I didn't end up as another Karen Carpenter. Could anyone tell what she was going through? She looked, behaved and talked normally and was a megstar with gezillion adoring fans and sell-out albums, before she collapsed into a heap of lifeless death.
Never be born poor, ugly , fat, stupid, unfashionable, unhip or on the wrong side of life, that seems to be the mantra we must all learn to chant.
Yet again I must hark back to prehistory where there was more than one defining standard of life, culture or looks .
Not that being gay hasn't got me feeling oppressed and bashed. I am not a party-going nor same-sex marriage advocate. However I feel that in the private sphere , I am not treading on anyone's toes. The culture is unaccepting and scornful at best. At worst, we could be attacked, ridiculed or discriminated.
If there are some who feel that they want to get married with solemnizing vows, engage in public displays of affection tastefully, attend loud open parties, it is their inalienable rights. For me, I will do it my way, quietly, privately and under no undue public glare or scrutiny.
To think that we were mentally ill in earlier psychiatric diagnoses. Quack treatments had been with electro-convulsive aversion therapy. As they would with smokers. Scientific studies have tried proving a gay gene and research carried out with "cadavers". I would like to know if death could not have altered the brain structure so much that crap theories about smaller and bigger hypothalamuses are just that - crapshit.
From phrenology, craniology, craniometry, anthropometry to psychometry, we have blundered time and again. I can only feel how the blacks, the Jews and the Irish must have felt at one stage in their lives. Suffer the many others who thus have been written off to a life of damnation.
The highly stratified society we live in is also a great source of tension for most. We are materialistic, aspiring to ever higher standards of living, cars, education, appellations and careers. We feel slighted if we were pigeonholed in some lowly status. We have to keep up with the Joneses.
Whatever happened to just taking someone for what he is - regardless of the house, car, education, titular apellation and career he holds or owns. So surely the Stoneman must have been treated more fairly and equally!
Common sense, wise judgement and a good heart are worth more in having and appreciating.
Did education help me be a better person and explore my full potential? My primary school years saw me engaging in many different kinds of activities which helped me developed confidence and my potentialities. I guess most of us enjoyed our childhood best but I can be seriously presumptive here of course. Think PSLE flunkers.
Somehow as I move up the ladder of education, the opportunities to explore myself did not seem available. It has not eliminated discrimination or iron-casted thinking. Nor has it made me a more thinking or compassionate being. It has not, in any measure, showed me how I could have applied my knowledge to my work or personally. It has not even prepared me for a career or for me to know what I want out of life. I think we just drift along, seeing where the next step takes us, usually again this depends on our grades and not on our interests or abilities. I hope I am not the exception here.
Perhaps in solitude, I could reflect, understand and learn better. Away from the madding crowd? Search for that inner voice amidst the cacophony of shrill and dickheady dissonance.
Politically I have read much from biographical accounts, of our revered Minister Mentor and he was a source of much of my admiration in my youth. Almost idol worship and hero worship. My one and only face-to-face encounter with him was when he dropped in literally, by air, for an address at a public forum. It was like awesome! I even wrote an article on this privately. It must have been a memorable event.
Singly Minister Mentor Lee must be the singular most influential factor in Singapore politics with the views he espouses. Most of which makes great sense and people are just too happy to support and go right along with it. As my parents did.
Local politics is seen as very cordial and even-tempered when compared to most other spheres of life like the cut and thrust of commerce. This is what I would like to seek and find out.
In sum, I think I am more an economic being, more than anything else. Which is sad. But as the world order is ordered in this way now, we cannot be any different, can we? I can only wish for the dawn of the Free and Natural Economy. The way things have always been and should always be! Where Economics does not rule. Whoever invented Economics ?
What orthodox Anglo-Catholicism has done for me is that I am so mesmerized with all the parables of doing good, that I feel very strongly about what is morally right and wrong.
But when this cuts into my sexual identity and practices, I have to draw a line to keep them separate. I cannot be going for Confession for some self-gratifying acts all the time, can I? After all we have delineated sins into venial, mortal and cardinal sins.
I also have to take umbrage at the condemnations about people like us from the pew-speakers. I feel unwelcomed and ridden with guilt. Either I stay or leave. I also take it as a very ritualistic worship without much fellowship among the congregation inside or oustide the church.
I don't think my Chinese roots are as rooted as they should be. My father being Peranankan Hakka and my mother being a true-blue Chinese are schooled in "western" ways. They can speak English.
We celebrate Christmas in a bigger way with our religion rather than as Chinese for the New Year festival. The last vestiges of our Chinese practices must surely be the cooking of mee-sua with hard-boiled eggs for birthdays, the giving of red packets, new clothes and shoes, the reunion dinner and kow-towing to elders on New Year visits.
Being Asian Chinese, there is also the reticence we reserve , the giving of face and respect to authority. Like for our bosses , managers and the older folks. We do not want to talk back, question or ridicule. We keep silent as we think this will preserve the peace and not create unharmonius relationships. Generally we tolerate and hold our tongue.
Usually this may work against us. We are thought of as being uncommunicative, stupid, followers and as wall flowers to be plucked off and trampled upon. Even though we do seriously, deep within our hearts, know that what is said is wrong or flawed.
Which is why the American way of openness , frankness, rigorous debates and communication strike me as admirable traits. But in the Singaporean context, this may also work against us as we are seen to be rebellious, individualistic and disrespectful.
Being Chinese also means that I am intrigued with Chinese history and culture. I am curious , geographically and tribally, where my paternal and maternal bloodline hail . I want to be able to positionally pinpoint my genetic map in that whole big place called China.
Our Peranakan culture is also a unique fusion of Chinese and Malay dating back to Zheng He's voyage to Malacca with the handing over of a Chinese princess to a Malay sultan as a tributary gift. The sarong kebaya, our cuisine, our patois and our beaded handicraft are unrivalled anywhere in the world.
In school, I learnt of many famous Chinese heros and legends. Yue Fei and that endearing story of the Old Foolish Man Moving Mountains. Unfortunately I have not much acquaintance with ancient Chinese classics like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms but I am making up now by reading them in its original language, or more contemporary novelists like Ru Xun.
I am more familiar with Western literature and philosophy and American culture like Hollywood. America must surely be a prolific producer of many an epic like "The Sound of Music" and the like. And of course American pornography, fashion ,hip, hype and attitude. Not forgetting its self-concocted language in a class of its own like "duh" for instance.
Even Bollywood, Kollywood, Taiwanese, Japanese , Hongkong and our very own Singaporean movies are in many cases clones of American imports - the genres of love, comedy , thriller, romance or detective stories. The famous James Bond 007 theme must have been played over and over again on both the Eastern and Western hemispheres. The evergreen boy meet girl romances must also qualify as a recurring and thus banal episode amongst Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean movies.
I can only look to China for its many traditional folk art not to go the dodo bird way. Folk art like xiang sheng and the clapper recital of verses. Homogenisation is no fun if there isn't going to be a shred of distinct cultural preservation left.
So frankly I don't watch any Chinese movies or programs anymore save the occasional Hongkong slap-stick comedy of old just for laughs. I can still enjoy both English and Chinese pop songs, where the Chinese lyrics are somewhat penned more meaningfully. The English lyrics of old songs used to be written much more solidly too as compared to the babble we sometimes hear now. Except perhaps for the groovy beat or rhythm.
As for food, rice is still the staple but bread and noodles are options I retreat to once in a while.
Living in rules-bound Singapore has made us disciplined, good followers for the economy, law-abiding, civil but which can truly be nightmarish in other aspects like self-expression , being different or not adhering to a one-track system.
Miss a beat, dye your hair , sport long hair or tattoos and wear tinted glasses and you can seriously be had. The sytem can be harsh, unforgiving and strict. You could be associated with hippies, thugs or fashionistas.
Think "we are guilty untill proven innocent", quite like ass-backwards don't you think in the court of law?
Hollywood and the porn industry have also fuelled obsession with looks, fashion sense, sex and consumerism. Is it any wonder that to keep up with this beauty culture, plastic surgery is so rife and can I deny I wasn't anorexic or bulimic once too? I am glad I didn't end up as another Karen Carpenter. Could anyone tell what she was going through? She looked, behaved and talked normally and was a megstar with gezillion adoring fans and sell-out albums, before she collapsed into a heap of lifeless death.
Never be born poor, ugly , fat, stupid, unfashionable, unhip or on the wrong side of life, that seems to be the mantra we must all learn to chant.
Yet again I must hark back to prehistory where there was more than one defining standard of life, culture or looks .
Not that being gay hasn't got me feeling oppressed and bashed. I am not a party-going nor same-sex marriage advocate. However I feel that in the private sphere , I am not treading on anyone's toes. The culture is unaccepting and scornful at best. At worst, we could be attacked, ridiculed or discriminated.
If there are some who feel that they want to get married with solemnizing vows, engage in public displays of affection tastefully, attend loud open parties, it is their inalienable rights. For me, I will do it my way, quietly, privately and under no undue public glare or scrutiny.
To think that we were mentally ill in earlier psychiatric diagnoses. Quack treatments had been with electro-convulsive aversion therapy. As they would with smokers. Scientific studies have tried proving a gay gene and research carried out with "cadavers". I would like to know if death could not have altered the brain structure so much that crap theories about smaller and bigger hypothalamuses are just that - crapshit.
From phrenology, craniology, craniometry, anthropometry to psychometry, we have blundered time and again. I can only feel how the blacks, the Jews and the Irish must have felt at one stage in their lives. Suffer the many others who thus have been written off to a life of damnation.
The highly stratified society we live in is also a great source of tension for most. We are materialistic, aspiring to ever higher standards of living, cars, education, appellations and careers. We feel slighted if we were pigeonholed in some lowly status. We have to keep up with the Joneses.
Whatever happened to just taking someone for what he is - regardless of the house, car, education, titular apellation and career he holds or owns. So surely the Stoneman must have been treated more fairly and equally!
Common sense, wise judgement and a good heart are worth more in having and appreciating.
Did education help me be a better person and explore my full potential? My primary school years saw me engaging in many different kinds of activities which helped me developed confidence and my potentialities. I guess most of us enjoyed our childhood best but I can be seriously presumptive here of course. Think PSLE flunkers.
Somehow as I move up the ladder of education, the opportunities to explore myself did not seem available. It has not eliminated discrimination or iron-casted thinking. Nor has it made me a more thinking or compassionate being. It has not, in any measure, showed me how I could have applied my knowledge to my work or personally. It has not even prepared me for a career or for me to know what I want out of life. I think we just drift along, seeing where the next step takes us, usually again this depends on our grades and not on our interests or abilities. I hope I am not the exception here.
Perhaps in solitude, I could reflect, understand and learn better. Away from the madding crowd? Search for that inner voice amidst the cacophony of shrill and dickheady dissonance.
Politically I have read much from biographical accounts, of our revered Minister Mentor and he was a source of much of my admiration in my youth. Almost idol worship and hero worship. My one and only face-to-face encounter with him was when he dropped in literally, by air, for an address at a public forum. It was like awesome! I even wrote an article on this privately. It must have been a memorable event.
Singly Minister Mentor Lee must be the singular most influential factor in Singapore politics with the views he espouses. Most of which makes great sense and people are just too happy to support and go right along with it. As my parents did.
Local politics is seen as very cordial and even-tempered when compared to most other spheres of life like the cut and thrust of commerce. This is what I would like to seek and find out.
In sum, I think I am more an economic being, more than anything else. Which is sad. But as the world order is ordered in this way now, we cannot be any different, can we? I can only wish for the dawn of the Free and Natural Economy. The way things have always been and should always be! Where Economics does not rule. Whoever invented Economics ?
Saturday, September 10, 2005
The Essentials Of Life And Where Do We Go From Here
We have done right on many counts of our governance. We have focussed very intensely on the primary and basic concerns of education, health, housing , employment and retirement. We have also forged a pluralistic yet united nation of a cosmopolitan mix. We have always never taken this for granted. We have also cultivated a strong military to safe-guard our national sovereignty.
With pluralism, we have seen the cross-fertilisation of many religions, cultures and particularly food. Our cuisines must be one of the most diverse and mixed that anyone has only to visit us to sample the world culinary smorgasbord.
We have also concentrated on our economy as this is the engine to drive growth which in turn fuels our other domestic needs for developing our infrastructure. We have adopted an open economy and the multi-nationals have come and transferred their expertise.
It is now time to move on, to be in higher-value scientific, technological , commercial and financial industries.
Perhaps even to move on to my Free and Natural Economy (aka Banana and free-loading economies) which I have explicated in my earlier blogs.
Much of our fundamentals are in place and the seedbed has been laid and solidified. What we need now is to layer on the other bedrocks of our society for us to leap ahead.
In education, we must move towards a more inquiry-based, scientific-oriented and knowledge-intensive curriculum which will inspire and churn out a new generation of international scientists and researchers. They will invent medicine for both old and new diseases, make our life more bearable in old age and create new industries around science and technology.
They will eliminate poverty, diseases and save the earth from environmental damage. They will mimick nature more and more in their production methods and products. They will help save and preserve all the existing and endangered species of plants and animals on earth.
They will demystify and unravel more of the scientific mysteries currently surrounding us. They will bridge our understanding more of ourselves and all of earth itself.
We must also aspire towards the arts, humanities and the social sciences as much as we do the biological and material sciences. We want to produce the next international best-seller science-fiction writer, fiction writer or popular science writer. A futurist and thinker.
Space exploration once thought unimaginable has happened. Even Aldous Huxley's Brave New World has predicted correctly some instances of its futurology.
I can see the region being a magnet for more anthropological research as South-east Asia must surely have within it its own treasure trove of geneticism, anthropo-paleontology, history and biologism. In fact I think our reserve must be open to scientists for their field-work and data collection on our distinctive flora and fauna.
Culturally, we have to leverage on our unique blend of racial, religious and linguistic mix to produce new and exciting food, performing and visual arts and language. This in turn will engender ideas for industry in new products and innovations.
Apart from driving the economy, people will need that extra space for themselves to pursue their own interests in the arts and sciences. Their economic activity must be closely tied to meaning in their lives, in their areas of passion , their intellectual, phenomenological and kinaethestic stimulation. After all we manifest intelligence in more than one way and we want to be able to optimise that in ways we can express it in.
We can only do that if there are new channels for us to divert our passions to. For sure I am not going to be teaching in any commercial or public school anytime soon as they are staid and hackneyed. I want to explore new avenues like in science, research and the liberal arts.
This must surely be Francis Fukuyama's precept in the Last Man whose spread of excellence will be in diverse fields : sports, arts and education for example.
We have most of our hardware in place. What we need is more software and operating system. It is people at the heart of all the things we do and thus the economy must centre on this. After all the economy caters to the needs and desires of the masses, does it not?
If there should be potentialities for conflict and grievances, it will be the blackhole of administration, huge income disparities, elitism, fair play, a level playing field, employment issues, jobs (or lack of jobs) , retirement, healthcare, sufficient amenities for recreation, quality and costs of living.
We must seriously address many of our current systems and practices to evaluate their impact, relevance, soundness, failings and disconnect in some instances.
In fact as I see it, Singapore's natural competitive advantages have always been its people and its land. We could have been the exotic Hawaii of the South Pacific or the Monte Carlo of the West Riveria, counting on our reserve and natural surrounds for tourism, idyllic frolicks and resort living.
We should have exported our intellectual capital in the arts, the sciences and the humanities, leveraging on our cosmopolite, a fusion of pluralistic diversity racially, culturally, linguistically and religiously. The thinkers, writers, performers, chefs and scientists.
This is how I see us moving on from here.
With pluralism, we have seen the cross-fertilisation of many religions, cultures and particularly food. Our cuisines must be one of the most diverse and mixed that anyone has only to visit us to sample the world culinary smorgasbord.
We have also concentrated on our economy as this is the engine to drive growth which in turn fuels our other domestic needs for developing our infrastructure. We have adopted an open economy and the multi-nationals have come and transferred their expertise.
It is now time to move on, to be in higher-value scientific, technological , commercial and financial industries.
Perhaps even to move on to my Free and Natural Economy (aka Banana and free-loading economies) which I have explicated in my earlier blogs.
Much of our fundamentals are in place and the seedbed has been laid and solidified. What we need now is to layer on the other bedrocks of our society for us to leap ahead.
In education, we must move towards a more inquiry-based, scientific-oriented and knowledge-intensive curriculum which will inspire and churn out a new generation of international scientists and researchers. They will invent medicine for both old and new diseases, make our life more bearable in old age and create new industries around science and technology.
They will eliminate poverty, diseases and save the earth from environmental damage. They will mimick nature more and more in their production methods and products. They will help save and preserve all the existing and endangered species of plants and animals on earth.
They will demystify and unravel more of the scientific mysteries currently surrounding us. They will bridge our understanding more of ourselves and all of earth itself.
We must also aspire towards the arts, humanities and the social sciences as much as we do the biological and material sciences. We want to produce the next international best-seller science-fiction writer, fiction writer or popular science writer. A futurist and thinker.
Space exploration once thought unimaginable has happened. Even Aldous Huxley's Brave New World has predicted correctly some instances of its futurology.
I can see the region being a magnet for more anthropological research as South-east Asia must surely have within it its own treasure trove of geneticism, anthropo-paleontology, history and biologism. In fact I think our reserve must be open to scientists for their field-work and data collection on our distinctive flora and fauna.
Culturally, we have to leverage on our unique blend of racial, religious and linguistic mix to produce new and exciting food, performing and visual arts and language. This in turn will engender ideas for industry in new products and innovations.
Apart from driving the economy, people will need that extra space for themselves to pursue their own interests in the arts and sciences. Their economic activity must be closely tied to meaning in their lives, in their areas of passion , their intellectual, phenomenological and kinaethestic stimulation. After all we manifest intelligence in more than one way and we want to be able to optimise that in ways we can express it in.
We can only do that if there are new channels for us to divert our passions to. For sure I am not going to be teaching in any commercial or public school anytime soon as they are staid and hackneyed. I want to explore new avenues like in science, research and the liberal arts.
This must surely be Francis Fukuyama's precept in the Last Man whose spread of excellence will be in diverse fields : sports, arts and education for example.
We have most of our hardware in place. What we need is more software and operating system. It is people at the heart of all the things we do and thus the economy must centre on this. After all the economy caters to the needs and desires of the masses, does it not?
If there should be potentialities for conflict and grievances, it will be the blackhole of administration, huge income disparities, elitism, fair play, a level playing field, employment issues, jobs (or lack of jobs) , retirement, healthcare, sufficient amenities for recreation, quality and costs of living.
We must seriously address many of our current systems and practices to evaluate their impact, relevance, soundness, failings and disconnect in some instances.
In fact as I see it, Singapore's natural competitive advantages have always been its people and its land. We could have been the exotic Hawaii of the South Pacific or the Monte Carlo of the West Riveria, counting on our reserve and natural surrounds for tourism, idyllic frolicks and resort living.
We should have exported our intellectual capital in the arts, the sciences and the humanities, leveraging on our cosmopolite, a fusion of pluralistic diversity racially, culturally, linguistically and religiously. The thinkers, writers, performers, chefs and scientists.
This is how I see us moving on from here.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Educational Edification
AIT Academy has finally closed. Its curriculum has been found wanting and not up to par. And you mean the authorities only discovered this after they had been in business for so many years? What about all the other commercial schools under the Ministry of Education's purview? You mean they get off scott free and the private school section doesn't lift a finger to intervene nor audit?
Why do they even bother registering private schools and leave the audit to someone else? Aren't they the better authority to do so in their capacity as education overseer and education directors? As it is the other body is also immersed in other accreditation schemes and consumer advocacy.
This sounds like the classic case I cited earlier of A Cuckoo Bird Flew Over the Nest. By registering aren't they conferring some degree of authencity even though they flatly refute accreditation?
What about CASETRUST's insistence on banking and withholding the business account? Didn't this precipitate the school's demise eventually? So is education a matter of its curriculum content and delivery pedagogy or is it more a business enterprise so that the latter actually over-rides the pre-eminence of the former?
I am not siding with the academy's management or quality of educational content. I am only saying that controlling a business' cash flow is like tying up the seminal vesicle in a vasectomy, effectively sterilising a red-hot blooded potent male in his prime.
However I think there are a few sacrosancts like education, the police force , basic health and the military (or other security providers and protectors for that matter) that these be not commodified or commercialised. Anyone can trade goods and services like selling yong-tau-foo or hair-dressing.
But let us keep these few remaining sacred turf sacred just for the sole reason that they are not tradeable services unlike the rest. Education involves people and their minds. Imagine still instilling fear of the bogeyman, the policeman and the doctrine that the earth is flat.
Any student taking up a course of study with an institution looks out for the famous name of the school, its track record in producing outstanding students and the facilities it affords. They also want reasonable fees, know who the teachers are , the special features of its curriculum and if it offers them the subjects they want to learn.
It must be a crying shame that anyone took such a long time to notice the decrepit state of private education here. Not that the public education sector is absolutely absolved of this sin in some instances either.
I never judge a person by his race, color, gender, age, wealth or education. What matters is what he has up in his head and down there in his heart. These are the two trademarks that distinguish someone. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to be imbued with good common sense , fair judgement and with a big heart to boot. Anyone is capable of this.
Education unfortunately was to enlarge this self of ours. It was to open our hearts and minds, create new vistas, help us be compassionate and enrich our lives.
Somehow many of our love-interests in education die a slow death as we move up the grades. There is something not quite right with not just what is being taught but how it is being flogged to death by the same old pedagogical pedantry.
We know higher education is to prepare us with a skill for the economy. But if the intellectual curios of some of the abler students cannot be met, surely education must have inadvertently missed its noble objective.
We have turned our schools into a cram , "exam-oriented" educational experience. We teach to the test. This does not in anyway test ability, it only measures memorization and exam preparation skills. What's more with a one-examination approach. This must surely be the final nail in the coffin for all of us. It is the do-all-or-end-all scenario if we should ever stub our toe on this one.
Particularly for science education, it is only one half of a whole equation that formalism can teach. The nature of science, the scientific knowledge, scientific inquiry and scientific method. The other equally important half is the informalism. The reflection, the doing , the sense of exploration and discovery.
Sometimes we are made to do our laboratory experiments as we would follow a cookbook recipe, without understanding or knowing why we are conducting them. We have missed out on the context and application of this research.
We used to do many titrations for our volumetric analyses during high school. I have never known what in darnation this was for except to guesstimate that the haemotology department must be doing this in the hospitals.
The scientific literacy of reasoning and rigorous debates must be skills that even the future non-scientist can use for his own personal and larger societal needs.
Students are not only the beneficents if education is made relevant and practical. All the great scientists were not all geniuses in schools but education must have aroused their intellectual curiousity sufficiently to make them want to pursue their lines of interests and inquires further, leading to significant and sometimes earth-shattering discoveries. All it took was a spark to ignite a pyrotechnical fireworks.
With these discoveries, mankind benefit too.
The balloting phenomenon of our primary school education enrolment is run like a state lottery. If at one end of the spectrum we have the few highly-sought after renowned schools and at the other, the enrolment-starved schools, shouldn't we then efficiently re-allocate resources by turning the unpopular ones via a name change into subsidiary branches of the famous ones? So instead of naming it First Toa Payoh Primary, we have instead Anglo Chinese Junior School (Branch 1) and to have renaming extended to all the less popular schools thus?
I am sure this solves declining school population and ensures all applications are successful. The infrastructure , the administrative machine and the instructors are all ready for the taking. All they need is a name change and a spirit of innovation to embrace the brand name's successes.
The focus of schools has veered towards preparing for exams and tests. The true meaning of education has been diluted and somehow lost . Education should be the larger task of preparing students for their life roles of independent learning, discovery and meaningful application in all spheres of their lives.
Francis Bacon : "History makes men wise, poetry witty, science curious, mathematics logic, moral grave, philosophy and rhetoric able to contend."
Why do they even bother registering private schools and leave the audit to someone else? Aren't they the better authority to do so in their capacity as education overseer and education directors? As it is the other body is also immersed in other accreditation schemes and consumer advocacy.
This sounds like the classic case I cited earlier of A Cuckoo Bird Flew Over the Nest. By registering aren't they conferring some degree of authencity even though they flatly refute accreditation?
What about CASETRUST's insistence on banking and withholding the business account? Didn't this precipitate the school's demise eventually? So is education a matter of its curriculum content and delivery pedagogy or is it more a business enterprise so that the latter actually over-rides the pre-eminence of the former?
I am not siding with the academy's management or quality of educational content. I am only saying that controlling a business' cash flow is like tying up the seminal vesicle in a vasectomy, effectively sterilising a red-hot blooded potent male in his prime.
However I think there are a few sacrosancts like education, the police force , basic health and the military (or other security providers and protectors for that matter) that these be not commodified or commercialised. Anyone can trade goods and services like selling yong-tau-foo or hair-dressing.
But let us keep these few remaining sacred turf sacred just for the sole reason that they are not tradeable services unlike the rest. Education involves people and their minds. Imagine still instilling fear of the bogeyman, the policeman and the doctrine that the earth is flat.
Any student taking up a course of study with an institution looks out for the famous name of the school, its track record in producing outstanding students and the facilities it affords. They also want reasonable fees, know who the teachers are , the special features of its curriculum and if it offers them the subjects they want to learn.
It must be a crying shame that anyone took such a long time to notice the decrepit state of private education here. Not that the public education sector is absolutely absolved of this sin in some instances either.
I never judge a person by his race, color, gender, age, wealth or education. What matters is what he has up in his head and down there in his heart. These are the two trademarks that distinguish someone. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to be imbued with good common sense , fair judgement and with a big heart to boot. Anyone is capable of this.
Education unfortunately was to enlarge this self of ours. It was to open our hearts and minds, create new vistas, help us be compassionate and enrich our lives.
Somehow many of our love-interests in education die a slow death as we move up the grades. There is something not quite right with not just what is being taught but how it is being flogged to death by the same old pedagogical pedantry.
We know higher education is to prepare us with a skill for the economy. But if the intellectual curios of some of the abler students cannot be met, surely education must have inadvertently missed its noble objective.
We have turned our schools into a cram , "exam-oriented" educational experience. We teach to the test. This does not in anyway test ability, it only measures memorization and exam preparation skills. What's more with a one-examination approach. This must surely be the final nail in the coffin for all of us. It is the do-all-or-end-all scenario if we should ever stub our toe on this one.
Particularly for science education, it is only one half of a whole equation that formalism can teach. The nature of science, the scientific knowledge, scientific inquiry and scientific method. The other equally important half is the informalism. The reflection, the doing , the sense of exploration and discovery.
Sometimes we are made to do our laboratory experiments as we would follow a cookbook recipe, without understanding or knowing why we are conducting them. We have missed out on the context and application of this research.
We used to do many titrations for our volumetric analyses during high school. I have never known what in darnation this was for except to guesstimate that the haemotology department must be doing this in the hospitals.
The scientific literacy of reasoning and rigorous debates must be skills that even the future non-scientist can use for his own personal and larger societal needs.
Students are not only the beneficents if education is made relevant and practical. All the great scientists were not all geniuses in schools but education must have aroused their intellectual curiousity sufficiently to make them want to pursue their lines of interests and inquires further, leading to significant and sometimes earth-shattering discoveries. All it took was a spark to ignite a pyrotechnical fireworks.
With these discoveries, mankind benefit too.
The balloting phenomenon of our primary school education enrolment is run like a state lottery. If at one end of the spectrum we have the few highly-sought after renowned schools and at the other, the enrolment-starved schools, shouldn't we then efficiently re-allocate resources by turning the unpopular ones via a name change into subsidiary branches of the famous ones? So instead of naming it First Toa Payoh Primary, we have instead Anglo Chinese Junior School (Branch 1) and to have renaming extended to all the less popular schools thus?
I am sure this solves declining school population and ensures all applications are successful. The infrastructure , the administrative machine and the instructors are all ready for the taking. All they need is a name change and a spirit of innovation to embrace the brand name's successes.
The focus of schools has veered towards preparing for exams and tests. The true meaning of education has been diluted and somehow lost . Education should be the larger task of preparing students for their life roles of independent learning, discovery and meaningful application in all spheres of their lives.
Francis Bacon : "History makes men wise, poetry witty, science curious, mathematics logic, moral grave, philosophy and rhetoric able to contend."
Our Psyche
Everyone of us is as guilty as the cuckoo bird who lays its eggs in someone's else nest, leaving its offsprings to grow with an alien family, thus shirking parental responsibility. It is materialism.
How many of us have not hankered for this and that as a fashion fad of the times? If you care to remember the nylon skin stockings, cell phones, mp3 players and the tomagotchi, must-haves that we crave, stoked by the makers' savvy media marketing.
We aspire to a house, a car and a lifestyle incomparable, much to our detriment usually as we find ourselves saddled and sinking deeper and deeper in the quicksand of debt-equity. We have not stopped to understand enough that these as good as borrowed goods are technically not assets but liabilities.
We are a crass lot. Unable to communicate the real us and our true selves because we have been conditioned to hide our miserable lot behind a thicket of false ostentation, materialism and a living image of imagined wealth, confidence and beauty.
We have de-sensitised ourselves so much that we are oblivious to much of what is spinning around us at a dizzying rate. It is someone else's world, not mine. I live my own and you yours. We have insulated and securitized ourselves in the snug material comforts we own. The only proclaimation of our personal worth , esteem and identity.
We surround ourselves with wants and desires, not needs. We think we will be happy if we have a pet or a boyfriend or girlfriend. Or a social circle. A shallow dotted circle that is. And material goods. This if we care to recall usually gets shelved after a time.
We psychologically deny many of the things we see with our eyes and feel in our heart to be true but which because it runs contrary to the mainstream herd instinct ,we suppress and proclaim its non-existence. We do not have the guts to step out of the line of mediocrity and count ourselves among the privileged few to live our lives as we richly need.
We have to be with the in-crowd. We are living out our lives as the marketing economy wants us to. Not what we really need.
We have not reached into our inner soul to find that true happiness that will certainly matter. We have glossed over many a bad experience or that of others, pushing it to the backest of our minds.
We wrap ourselves in a web of lies and denial. We say one thing but deep inside we actually feel another. We have become masters of our own deceit and downfall. Artificial as we come, artificial as we go.
What we spill out are someone's words, feelings and reactions. Some books we read, some conversations we heard and someone we spoke with. Is what we say what we experienced and know? More often than not, no.
We think we are writing and saying something meaningful. But when we deconstruct, we find that it means zilch and it is total nihilism.
It is time that each of us wake up to our real selves, open our eyes and hearts to feel once again and to understand.
We will truly be human again if we can do this.
How many of us have not hankered for this and that as a fashion fad of the times? If you care to remember the nylon skin stockings, cell phones, mp3 players and the tomagotchi, must-haves that we crave, stoked by the makers' savvy media marketing.
We aspire to a house, a car and a lifestyle incomparable, much to our detriment usually as we find ourselves saddled and sinking deeper and deeper in the quicksand of debt-equity. We have not stopped to understand enough that these as good as borrowed goods are technically not assets but liabilities.
We are a crass lot. Unable to communicate the real us and our true selves because we have been conditioned to hide our miserable lot behind a thicket of false ostentation, materialism and a living image of imagined wealth, confidence and beauty.
We have de-sensitised ourselves so much that we are oblivious to much of what is spinning around us at a dizzying rate. It is someone else's world, not mine. I live my own and you yours. We have insulated and securitized ourselves in the snug material comforts we own. The only proclaimation of our personal worth , esteem and identity.
We surround ourselves with wants and desires, not needs. We think we will be happy if we have a pet or a boyfriend or girlfriend. Or a social circle. A shallow dotted circle that is. And material goods. This if we care to recall usually gets shelved after a time.
We psychologically deny many of the things we see with our eyes and feel in our heart to be true but which because it runs contrary to the mainstream herd instinct ,we suppress and proclaim its non-existence. We do not have the guts to step out of the line of mediocrity and count ourselves among the privileged few to live our lives as we richly need.
We have to be with the in-crowd. We are living out our lives as the marketing economy wants us to. Not what we really need.
We have not reached into our inner soul to find that true happiness that will certainly matter. We have glossed over many a bad experience or that of others, pushing it to the backest of our minds.
We wrap ourselves in a web of lies and denial. We say one thing but deep inside we actually feel another. We have become masters of our own deceit and downfall. Artificial as we come, artificial as we go.
What we spill out are someone's words, feelings and reactions. Some books we read, some conversations we heard and someone we spoke with. Is what we say what we experienced and know? More often than not, no.
We think we are writing and saying something meaningful. But when we deconstruct, we find that it means zilch and it is total nihilism.
It is time that each of us wake up to our real selves, open our eyes and hearts to feel once again and to understand.
We will truly be human again if we can do this.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Inevitable Collapse If New World Order Un-ushered
Francis Fukuyama predicts politically the end model of every nation-state to be a liberal democracy. Samuel Hungtington cautions that culturally, the clash of civilisations lurks possibly in four quarters of the world. Thomas Friedman sees globalisation as the end-point of many a society, turning itself democratic and freely capitalistic. Jared Diamond shows with historical illustrations, environmental collapses of societies around the world.
They are all right to some extent. May I add mine to all these eminent and erudite scholars and thinkers. That is the New World Order of either or both a Banana and/or Free-loading economy.
We have gone from the Cold War to communism to capitalism. Much of which have not worked as perfectly or as close to perfect as it should have. However with the New World Order, one recurring trait will be the unifying power of equal global partners in government, finance and commerce.
As world trends have palpably indicated, the free economy has created wide disparity in incomes and wealth distribution, not only within nation-states but across the globe. Economic growth measured in financial statistics is no indication of social progress. This was as reported by the United Nations Development Program report. Countries still lag in eliminating poverty, infanticide , mortality, health , education and income gaps.
What this means is that the number does not show the whole picture. So all nation states may be liberal democracies, integrated by globalisation but society as a whole has yet to hook on to a slice of the economic growth pie.
The New World Order as I envisioned, if un-ushered fast, will only see the collapse of societies as a whole. Even the developed First World economies who are fast outsourcing and losing their productive capacities to cheaper Third World countries will be struck. Just as the extinct dinosaurs were when a meteorite crashed onto earth hundreds of million years ago, without even knowing what hit them, literally.
The hoi polloi will find themselves in a class struggle against the elites and even between themselves. The aristocrats will be in a no better position as globalisation ensures that no one is insulated against the problems of the world.
It recognises no distinction - young, old, poor, rich, male or female. When its muscled arm flexes, it sweeps all off its path into oblivion and despair.
There will be bitter resentment all round and this translates into many retaliatory measures that everyone may engage in as they fight back against the laissez-faire economy that has left them in no-man's land.
The financial gurus and tycoons will just as surely as the big boys did, shift their commercial funds to growing and developing nations to take advantage of a lower-cost environment and burgeoning economy.
Environmentally we are ravaged . Eco-catastrophe like global warming and loss of natural ecological buffers against climatic disasters loom ever larger in the horizon. We are living in poisoned air, earth and water , eating off un-natural , possibly even toxic man-manufactured and contrived food.
Population explosion , pollution , eutrophication and depleting natural resources will not see the sustainability of earth very much longer.
The only way out will be to impose the New World Order, calling on all nations of the world to call a truce on money as the means of exchange. When one country does, then another follows and once the whole world is plugged into this Banana and Free-loading economy (or Natural Economy) , lo and behold, we have hoisted ourselves out of a trap of a crippling , debilitating and resource-destructive free-capitalist model.
We have to hold back our encroachment of Nature, destroying him and instead learn to work in tandem with his natural cycle of production.
The chain reaction of a natural economy so ignited will see the end of money which being the root of all evil has led us to the state we are now in. In a new world order, we will be returning once again in catarhsis with Earth as it was in the beginning - created for the utility and enjoyment of mankind to eat of its fruits.
Can we turn the hands of the clock back to its original intention and form? Only men of the world can decide and take action for this to happen. We will all die sooner if this natural economy does not take root fast enough.
Citizens of the world unite - this is our only chance of surviving the 21st century amidst our constant attack on our only planet.
Do we all want to live or die? The choice is yours. We can destroy just as we can create.
They are all right to some extent. May I add mine to all these eminent and erudite scholars and thinkers. That is the New World Order of either or both a Banana and/or Free-loading economy.
We have gone from the Cold War to communism to capitalism. Much of which have not worked as perfectly or as close to perfect as it should have. However with the New World Order, one recurring trait will be the unifying power of equal global partners in government, finance and commerce.
As world trends have palpably indicated, the free economy has created wide disparity in incomes and wealth distribution, not only within nation-states but across the globe. Economic growth measured in financial statistics is no indication of social progress. This was as reported by the United Nations Development Program report. Countries still lag in eliminating poverty, infanticide , mortality, health , education and income gaps.
What this means is that the number does not show the whole picture. So all nation states may be liberal democracies, integrated by globalisation but society as a whole has yet to hook on to a slice of the economic growth pie.
The New World Order as I envisioned, if un-ushered fast, will only see the collapse of societies as a whole. Even the developed First World economies who are fast outsourcing and losing their productive capacities to cheaper Third World countries will be struck. Just as the extinct dinosaurs were when a meteorite crashed onto earth hundreds of million years ago, without even knowing what hit them, literally.
The hoi polloi will find themselves in a class struggle against the elites and even between themselves. The aristocrats will be in a no better position as globalisation ensures that no one is insulated against the problems of the world.
It recognises no distinction - young, old, poor, rich, male or female. When its muscled arm flexes, it sweeps all off its path into oblivion and despair.
There will be bitter resentment all round and this translates into many retaliatory measures that everyone may engage in as they fight back against the laissez-faire economy that has left them in no-man's land.
The financial gurus and tycoons will just as surely as the big boys did, shift their commercial funds to growing and developing nations to take advantage of a lower-cost environment and burgeoning economy.
Environmentally we are ravaged . Eco-catastrophe like global warming and loss of natural ecological buffers against climatic disasters loom ever larger in the horizon. We are living in poisoned air, earth and water , eating off un-natural , possibly even toxic man-manufactured and contrived food.
Population explosion , pollution , eutrophication and depleting natural resources will not see the sustainability of earth very much longer.
The only way out will be to impose the New World Order, calling on all nations of the world to call a truce on money as the means of exchange. When one country does, then another follows and once the whole world is plugged into this Banana and Free-loading economy (or Natural Economy) , lo and behold, we have hoisted ourselves out of a trap of a crippling , debilitating and resource-destructive free-capitalist model.
We have to hold back our encroachment of Nature, destroying him and instead learn to work in tandem with his natural cycle of production.
The chain reaction of a natural economy so ignited will see the end of money which being the root of all evil has led us to the state we are now in. In a new world order, we will be returning once again in catarhsis with Earth as it was in the beginning - created for the utility and enjoyment of mankind to eat of its fruits.
Can we turn the hands of the clock back to its original intention and form? Only men of the world can decide and take action for this to happen. We will all die sooner if this natural economy does not take root fast enough.
Citizens of the world unite - this is our only chance of surviving the 21st century amidst our constant attack on our only planet.
Do we all want to live or die? The choice is yours. We can destroy just as we can create.
Man Does Not Live By The Economy Alone
If there ever was one thing we learnt from Hurricane Katrina ravaging New Orleans, it surely has to be this : the free-capitalism model isn't working any more and the economy is the root of all evil.
Man does not live by the economy alone. Otherwise he is not "man" or woman. A flesh-and-blood person such as we are , is made up of more than what the economy defines us to be. This is that inexplicable human touch or humaneness about us that distinguishes us from all other primates on earth.
In my previous blogs, I have advocated two new world orders where fusing the two in some appropriate proportion being a more than fair possibility.
What I am essentially articulating is to go back to our primordal basics, without forgoing any of our current standard or quality of living or consumption. This is made possible with the one and only one axis of evil being obliterated to the abyss of hell - our monetary means of exchange. Flushing right along with it will be the cost of living, inflation, deflation and stagflation.
The Cenozoic era saw the evolution of early hominids (tool grasping and making primates) bipedalling and walking upright. They ate, fed and lived off the land. They died on the land too. From dust you came, so too shall dust you return ( a popular Christian biblical quote ).
This is exactly the living condition I am seriously urging the united nations of the world to embrace with open and welcoming arms.
Of course given the present circumstances we find ourselves in now, we can no longer be eating or drinking off the land. But if we adopt either or both the 2 new orders I am espousing, the whole world operation will be that of a globalised hypermart with only one twist - and that is that since money (currency) is no longer the transacting medium - everything bought or sold will be free.
This is as good as spearing a bison or plucking off a durian tree of old. The retail malls, eateries and service providers are all running their businesses as one large banquet with the citizenry feasting, buying and consulting off them.
The homes we live in come free too as the building materials are free, obtained from another country either because of a barter, free-loading or through a banana transaction.
Hurricane Katrina has clearly demonstrated the evils , shortcomings and failure of the capitalistic model. The economy has created endless friction amongst its followers. The Asian financial crisis and stock market crashes have testified to its harbinger-status.
All of us are caught in a vicious cycle of rut, boom and bust. Our work sometimes means so little in terms of meaning and fulfilment that we only cling on solely because of that one evil need to stay alive and pay off all our encumbrances. We should be living out our lives meaningfully, fulfilling our aspirations in the arts and sciences to improve our health, lives, living condition and environment. We should be living as one with Father Earth.
Instead man is being pitted against man. Man against company. Company against company. Man and company against nation. Nation against nation. World against the environment. This is never going to end as far as I can see.
What we do know is that all of us will die one day. We should be living harmoniously together, on par , civilly, lovingly and compassionately. There should be no pecking order, wars (tangibly or metaphorically), domination, discrimination, hate and stratification.
I want to be able to walk into an eatery, eat my fill, chat merrily and wholeheartedly with the vendor and not worry about being overcharged, watch him miserably count his takings , slogging their asses off or subserviently taking orders from a warlord. Once money does not figure in any of our daily events, this can come true.
This is what the system has now generated. All manner of social ills and evils. Why are we burdening ourselves with so much with so little time and so short a span of life we own.
It must surely be a most un-natural order of things that was never meant to be, considering as I said we lived 99% of our time here as hunter-gatherers in the first place.
The economy cannot be dictated by money. Money must go. If the law of energy states that it can neither be created nor destroyed, so too must I add my law of Universal Humanity : If we are creators of the world order, so too can we be its destroyers.
Man does not live by the economy alone. Otherwise he is not "man" or woman. A flesh-and-blood person such as we are , is made up of more than what the economy defines us to be. This is that inexplicable human touch or humaneness about us that distinguishes us from all other primates on earth.
In my previous blogs, I have advocated two new world orders where fusing the two in some appropriate proportion being a more than fair possibility.
What I am essentially articulating is to go back to our primordal basics, without forgoing any of our current standard or quality of living or consumption. This is made possible with the one and only one axis of evil being obliterated to the abyss of hell - our monetary means of exchange. Flushing right along with it will be the cost of living, inflation, deflation and stagflation.
The Cenozoic era saw the evolution of early hominids (tool grasping and making primates) bipedalling and walking upright. They ate, fed and lived off the land. They died on the land too. From dust you came, so too shall dust you return ( a popular Christian biblical quote ).
This is exactly the living condition I am seriously urging the united nations of the world to embrace with open and welcoming arms.
Of course given the present circumstances we find ourselves in now, we can no longer be eating or drinking off the land. But if we adopt either or both the 2 new orders I am espousing, the whole world operation will be that of a globalised hypermart with only one twist - and that is that since money (currency) is no longer the transacting medium - everything bought or sold will be free.
This is as good as spearing a bison or plucking off a durian tree of old. The retail malls, eateries and service providers are all running their businesses as one large banquet with the citizenry feasting, buying and consulting off them.
The homes we live in come free too as the building materials are free, obtained from another country either because of a barter, free-loading or through a banana transaction.
Hurricane Katrina has clearly demonstrated the evils , shortcomings and failure of the capitalistic model. The economy has created endless friction amongst its followers. The Asian financial crisis and stock market crashes have testified to its harbinger-status.
All of us are caught in a vicious cycle of rut, boom and bust. Our work sometimes means so little in terms of meaning and fulfilment that we only cling on solely because of that one evil need to stay alive and pay off all our encumbrances. We should be living out our lives meaningfully, fulfilling our aspirations in the arts and sciences to improve our health, lives, living condition and environment. We should be living as one with Father Earth.
Instead man is being pitted against man. Man against company. Company against company. Man and company against nation. Nation against nation. World against the environment. This is never going to end as far as I can see.
What we do know is that all of us will die one day. We should be living harmoniously together, on par , civilly, lovingly and compassionately. There should be no pecking order, wars (tangibly or metaphorically), domination, discrimination, hate and stratification.
I want to be able to walk into an eatery, eat my fill, chat merrily and wholeheartedly with the vendor and not worry about being overcharged, watch him miserably count his takings , slogging their asses off or subserviently taking orders from a warlord. Once money does not figure in any of our daily events, this can come true.
This is what the system has now generated. All manner of social ills and evils. Why are we burdening ourselves with so much with so little time and so short a span of life we own.
It must surely be a most un-natural order of things that was never meant to be, considering as I said we lived 99% of our time here as hunter-gatherers in the first place.
The economy cannot be dictated by money. Money must go. If the law of energy states that it can neither be created nor destroyed, so too must I add my law of Universal Humanity : If we are creators of the world order, so too can we be its destroyers.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Dissecting Us
Singapore stands at the unique centre of a barrage of myriad civilisations, so cosmopolitan that only we have our equally unusual salad dish of "rojak" to match.
We have our largely Moslem neighbors north and south of us, an emerging super Chinese and Inidan powerhouses further north, a largely Chinese populace to its east and an English Oceania south-eastern.
Back in time, Singapore was at first inhabited by indigenous groups, plying their trade near the river mouth living in old villages. It was mostly fishing as their primary occupation.
Then along came the British East India in the company of Sir Stamford Raffles, turning us into a bustling seaport and a colonial tributary system of the British Empire. Seamlessly we assimilated the British working order of rule and governance. Our education system therefore followed suit in the mould of our colonialists.
But with America surging ahead in world supremacy in terms of socio-economic and political assertion, many of its cultural exports were sent to our shores. Cecil D Milles' "Hollywood", the golden arches of McDonalds and the pop culture of Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola all continue to predominate our cultural sphere right up to today.
America has also over-reaching influence in much literature and scientific innovation. Many great thinkers, writers, scientists and politicians have passed out of its corridors since time immemorial.
Within Singapore, we have a blend of Chinese, Malays, Indians and the others. Now this "others" is a potent chemistry of mostly European Asian miscegenation. So we have Portugese Indians, Malayalam and Sikhs, just to name a few. With time, a homogeneous population in the heyday may eventually peter out to a heterogeneous one as more and more new immigrants inter-marry. Not a good experimental ground for genetic studies.
We have our national psyche of our anthem, pledge and culturally Singaporean identity. Our pledge embraces all regardless of race, language or religion. We have our creolised English language of Singlish. Singapore has Americanised to such a large extent that sexual identity also affects our constitution. In fact no individual can claim to be a person not made up of large, sometimes contrasting and even contradictory multitudes.
This is not uncharacteristic of open, porous and welcoming societies such as ours. America, the icon of liberty , has seen many such transmigration. Bruce Lee was Chinese American and Einstein German-born American. Professor Stephen Jay Gould was British American, T.S Eliot American British and Rudyard Kipling India-born British.
In fact religion played such an important role in some of their works too as in the case of Eliot who converted to Anglo-Catholicism. Both Einstein and Stephen Jay Gould are Jews.
These are just many examples of pluralistic manifestation. In Singapore, a Chinese may be a Christian who speaks English. Or an Indian Muslim who speaks English.
In other words, the person has not only to contend with his nationality, his racial (thus perhaps genetic) make-up, his religion but also his education, the language he speaks and learns plus his sexual identity. Do not forget gender and social stratification and you can appreciate the poem which succinctly sums up the complementary and opposable forces within ourselves: Do I contradict myself? Very well then, so I do contradict myself. That is because I am large. I am made up of multitudes.
Thus a person is made up of these and more.
The moment the person is born right up to the school he attends all exact a price on one's identity and constitution.
My parents boast of a cultural blend of Chinese and Peranakan Baba. My father speaks English, having been schooled in colonial ways, and Malay while mother speaks not Mandarin but her native dialect of Teochew and English, again because she was schooled in an English missionary convent. My father does not speak his native tongue of Hakka unfortunately so we never got round to picking up this language.
Racially thus I am part Chinese and part Malay. I am also half Chinese and half Singaporean, expressed in terms of nationality. However my supposed largely Chinese-constitution does not preclude me from embracing a very Anglo-orthodox Roman Catholicism which has its roots in Abrahamic Judaism. If I had been a purist Chinese, then I should have been Confucian or Taoist in outlook or Buddhistic. But I am not.
The school I attend is missionary, highly westernised British English but with a Singaporean twist. I speak, write and read English far better than I do my Mandarin mother tongue. After all Mandarin is my second language and the contact with the language is relegated to just the few lessons we have in school as compared to all the other subjects which are taught in the main English language. I can also speak most of the other Chinese dialects.
Hence I can assimilate most of the Western literature on the humanities, sciences and social sciences much easily than any in Chinese. In fact, there are frankly not that many Chinese thinkers or writers apart from the few we always cite, or at least as far as I am aware of.
Even if it is, being written in the Chinese lingo would be laborious reading in some instances because of the technicalities particularly if it is scientific or humanities-based. Imagine being a linguistician in the English language and having to read Luther's Germanic Ausburg Confessions, Sir Thomas More's Latin Utopia or Galileo's Helio-centros in Italian.
The television programs I watch are Taiwan, Hongkong and Singapore Chinese and American productions. American Hollywood must surely have a pervading hold on me because of its proliferation of movies coming out of its assembly line, highly entertaining and sometimes comical in most respects. We do not have that many British programs on air except for some scientific exploration serials.
Being an Asian male, many stereotypical expectations and prejudices ensue. It is taboo for Asian fathers to be nuturing which is a role the mother must fulfill. However the American way was freedom of expression, free will and individualism. Birth order nor gender gets you any privileges. Everyone is mostly treated on an equal footing, at least in writing.
Familial ties and value systems, together with personal ethos cultivated over time spent at home, at play and at work , make up another order of influential factors.
So the next time someone asks, "Who are you?", can you seriously be able to come up with a sure and steadfast reply? For me, I will probably be unable to put it down to a simplistic one-liner that I am a Singaporean Chinese. It certainly is the sum of all the little parts and more.
I wonder if Mr Homo-erectus or Mr Cro-Magnon wouldn't have a much easier time explaining who he is. After all he is freer of all the encumbrances we have encumbered ourselves today.
We have our largely Moslem neighbors north and south of us, an emerging super Chinese and Inidan powerhouses further north, a largely Chinese populace to its east and an English Oceania south-eastern.
Back in time, Singapore was at first inhabited by indigenous groups, plying their trade near the river mouth living in old villages. It was mostly fishing as their primary occupation.
Then along came the British East India in the company of Sir Stamford Raffles, turning us into a bustling seaport and a colonial tributary system of the British Empire. Seamlessly we assimilated the British working order of rule and governance. Our education system therefore followed suit in the mould of our colonialists.
But with America surging ahead in world supremacy in terms of socio-economic and political assertion, many of its cultural exports were sent to our shores. Cecil D Milles' "Hollywood", the golden arches of McDonalds and the pop culture of Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola all continue to predominate our cultural sphere right up to today.
America has also over-reaching influence in much literature and scientific innovation. Many great thinkers, writers, scientists and politicians have passed out of its corridors since time immemorial.
Within Singapore, we have a blend of Chinese, Malays, Indians and the others. Now this "others" is a potent chemistry of mostly European Asian miscegenation. So we have Portugese Indians, Malayalam and Sikhs, just to name a few. With time, a homogeneous population in the heyday may eventually peter out to a heterogeneous one as more and more new immigrants inter-marry. Not a good experimental ground for genetic studies.
We have our national psyche of our anthem, pledge and culturally Singaporean identity. Our pledge embraces all regardless of race, language or religion. We have our creolised English language of Singlish. Singapore has Americanised to such a large extent that sexual identity also affects our constitution. In fact no individual can claim to be a person not made up of large, sometimes contrasting and even contradictory multitudes.
This is not uncharacteristic of open, porous and welcoming societies such as ours. America, the icon of liberty , has seen many such transmigration. Bruce Lee was Chinese American and Einstein German-born American. Professor Stephen Jay Gould was British American, T.S Eliot American British and Rudyard Kipling India-born British.
In fact religion played such an important role in some of their works too as in the case of Eliot who converted to Anglo-Catholicism. Both Einstein and Stephen Jay Gould are Jews.
These are just many examples of pluralistic manifestation. In Singapore, a Chinese may be a Christian who speaks English. Or an Indian Muslim who speaks English.
In other words, the person has not only to contend with his nationality, his racial (thus perhaps genetic) make-up, his religion but also his education, the language he speaks and learns plus his sexual identity. Do not forget gender and social stratification and you can appreciate the poem which succinctly sums up the complementary and opposable forces within ourselves: Do I contradict myself? Very well then, so I do contradict myself. That is because I am large. I am made up of multitudes.
Thus a person is made up of these and more.
The moment the person is born right up to the school he attends all exact a price on one's identity and constitution.
My parents boast of a cultural blend of Chinese and Peranakan Baba. My father speaks English, having been schooled in colonial ways, and Malay while mother speaks not Mandarin but her native dialect of Teochew and English, again because she was schooled in an English missionary convent. My father does not speak his native tongue of Hakka unfortunately so we never got round to picking up this language.
Racially thus I am part Chinese and part Malay. I am also half Chinese and half Singaporean, expressed in terms of nationality. However my supposed largely Chinese-constitution does not preclude me from embracing a very Anglo-orthodox Roman Catholicism which has its roots in Abrahamic Judaism. If I had been a purist Chinese, then I should have been Confucian or Taoist in outlook or Buddhistic. But I am not.
The school I attend is missionary, highly westernised British English but with a Singaporean twist. I speak, write and read English far better than I do my Mandarin mother tongue. After all Mandarin is my second language and the contact with the language is relegated to just the few lessons we have in school as compared to all the other subjects which are taught in the main English language. I can also speak most of the other Chinese dialects.
Hence I can assimilate most of the Western literature on the humanities, sciences and social sciences much easily than any in Chinese. In fact, there are frankly not that many Chinese thinkers or writers apart from the few we always cite, or at least as far as I am aware of.
Even if it is, being written in the Chinese lingo would be laborious reading in some instances because of the technicalities particularly if it is scientific or humanities-based. Imagine being a linguistician in the English language and having to read Luther's Germanic Ausburg Confessions, Sir Thomas More's Latin Utopia or Galileo's Helio-centros in Italian.
The television programs I watch are Taiwan, Hongkong and Singapore Chinese and American productions. American Hollywood must surely have a pervading hold on me because of its proliferation of movies coming out of its assembly line, highly entertaining and sometimes comical in most respects. We do not have that many British programs on air except for some scientific exploration serials.
Being an Asian male, many stereotypical expectations and prejudices ensue. It is taboo for Asian fathers to be nuturing which is a role the mother must fulfill. However the American way was freedom of expression, free will and individualism. Birth order nor gender gets you any privileges. Everyone is mostly treated on an equal footing, at least in writing.
Familial ties and value systems, together with personal ethos cultivated over time spent at home, at play and at work , make up another order of influential factors.
So the next time someone asks, "Who are you?", can you seriously be able to come up with a sure and steadfast reply? For me, I will probably be unable to put it down to a simplistic one-liner that I am a Singaporean Chinese. It certainly is the sum of all the little parts and more.
I wonder if Mr Homo-erectus or Mr Cro-Magnon wouldn't have a much easier time explaining who he is. After all he is freer of all the encumbrances we have encumbered ourselves today.
Another Different World Order - 2nd Model - Banana Republic
Yes folks. I have figured out yet another way we can all beat the system and come out looking like shoguns of the Tokugawa era. This time it involves the namesake of a tropical fruit - the ubiquitous banana.
As with my first model, I envisage that domestically the free-loading style endures while trans-border exchanges earns foreign exchange.
A banana republic works like this : for foreign exchange earnings, we will have our very own republicans slogging their asses off but for free. What our country produces will be consumed by a foreign country. Example: we make sex toys while Iraq purchases.
We get paid for this in hard-earned foreign-currency equivalent or our local Sing dollars. With this cash hoard, we similarly make our purchases for goods and services we need to make our economy.
Chief among which feature pornographic and building materials, oil, stainless steel rivets and liquid crystal display screens.
The citizenry will be microcosmally involved in this big scheme of things as they are the ones who will be the productive units, much like the worker ants in a colony. The upshot is an intertwined, closely-knit community of people very much into their own elements.
To top it off, we have completely eliminated the sin and root cause of all the evil that has brought on wars and stock market crashes , that transactional means of exchange - money.
We are now operating on a cashless, borderless and invisible force of free enterprise under the cloak of a new world order.
What could be a happier or more astounding world to live in where money no longer rule the roost and our lives?
Voila and I guess I am again harking back to the good old lithic age of our ancient ancestors where earth was Gaia's paradise and Adam's Eden. Wouldn't this be a marvellous frolick in nature once again which it should rightly be?
I am going to detour for a while en route to the New York headquarters of the United Nations.
Shouldn't you pause to ponder and relish the savoury prospects of such a world too?
As with my first model, I envisage that domestically the free-loading style endures while trans-border exchanges earns foreign exchange.
A banana republic works like this : for foreign exchange earnings, we will have our very own republicans slogging their asses off but for free. What our country produces will be consumed by a foreign country. Example: we make sex toys while Iraq purchases.
We get paid for this in hard-earned foreign-currency equivalent or our local Sing dollars. With this cash hoard, we similarly make our purchases for goods and services we need to make our economy.
Chief among which feature pornographic and building materials, oil, stainless steel rivets and liquid crystal display screens.
The citizenry will be microcosmally involved in this big scheme of things as they are the ones who will be the productive units, much like the worker ants in a colony. The upshot is an intertwined, closely-knit community of people very much into their own elements.
To top it off, we have completely eliminated the sin and root cause of all the evil that has brought on wars and stock market crashes , that transactional means of exchange - money.
We are now operating on a cashless, borderless and invisible force of free enterprise under the cloak of a new world order.
What could be a happier or more astounding world to live in where money no longer rule the roost and our lives?
Voila and I guess I am again harking back to the good old lithic age of our ancient ancestors where earth was Gaia's paradise and Adam's Eden. Wouldn't this be a marvellous frolick in nature once again which it should rightly be?
I am going to detour for a while en route to the New York headquarters of the United Nations.
Shouldn't you pause to ponder and relish the savoury prospects of such a world too?
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
A New World Order - At Last - Free Loading
By jove, I think this is it. A new world order. Only if all measly 193 nations (I am putting in those two who are not members of the United Nation for various political or taxonomic reasons) of the world can and will collaborate.
It will mean the end of all the insufferable miseries we have put ourselves through all these years, terminating in a ghastly and untimely death. We could for instance die of a bloated stomach from hunching over the computer continually. Or an enlarged or elongated penis because we were sitting down most of our lives and that pee-wee was all the time squeezed in between our thighs and our testicles were crouched low below so that all three crown jewels were hyperventilating . The result is telling. Baldness, followed by tufts of pubic hairs dropping off with intermittent infertility and culminating in a slow, excruciating spasmodic death.
First, nationally. Mr Chap-Chai-Ben charges you $3.00 for a plate of dish rice. Sometimes that woman , M/s Chap-Chai-Ben, with the sinister look charges you $3.30, because she was menstruating or she was just bitchy that morning as she had not slept with her husband for a long while.
Mr Chap-Chai-Ben needs your $3.00 because he needs to pay for his monthly stall rental, his mortgage on his HDB flat, his PUB utilities, his StarHub telecommunication and his Honda Civic car. Incidentally after toting up our monthly bill, we would invariably discover that three-quarters of it accrue to national state boards or privatised national state boards (sorry if this sounds oxy-moronic). The Honda Civic however falls in private hands unless Honda Civic goes bust one day and decides to call in a national state board to sit in with it to co-partake or re-partake the pecuniary constitution. The food he needs he can always lap up the spoils after all the customers have had their fill.
$3.00 may be a small amount but going by a day count of hungry customers, this easily snowballs into 120 plates of dish rice translating in 360 dollar terms. Multiply that by 28, 29, 30 or 31 days and you come close to between $10 080 and $11 160 in a month.
Now if we follow this New World Order and we do not have to pay for our food or all the encumberances of rental, mortgages, utilities, telecommunication and car, then wouldn't we be freed of work and the wage that was meant to pay for these and our groceries, funeral rites and
sarcophagi in the first place?
I am not advocating a barter-trade system though this may be a viable option should this free-loading system not work in some cases, especially at the international level.
Nationally, all the private operators would function like one huge, colossal hypermart of fun-fair traders, dispensing free goodies and freebies. They do not have to pay wages as the proletariat works for free because he, in return, lives for free, eats for free, shits for free and dies for free. Isn't this a free-loading good system?
Internationally, the system works the same. Raw materials could be obtained for free from resource-rich neighbors who needs that foreign capital, imprimis, because it had to use this foreign exchange to fuel its domestic economy. It could instead barter in exchange for its needs or better still, obtain free goods it needs from its other neighbors.
This New World free-loading order will call for some contrivance and collusion on the part of member states. If it does, it will be Sir Thomas More's Utopian dreams come true. It can only mean people, who are at the heart of all civilisations, will live longer, happier, healthier and more civilly.
What a happenstance state of affairs! I think I am going off for work at the United Nations to advocate this new world system.
It will mean the end of all the insufferable miseries we have put ourselves through all these years, terminating in a ghastly and untimely death. We could for instance die of a bloated stomach from hunching over the computer continually. Or an enlarged or elongated penis because we were sitting down most of our lives and that pee-wee was all the time squeezed in between our thighs and our testicles were crouched low below so that all three crown jewels were hyperventilating . The result is telling. Baldness, followed by tufts of pubic hairs dropping off with intermittent infertility and culminating in a slow, excruciating spasmodic death.
First, nationally. Mr Chap-Chai-Ben charges you $3.00 for a plate of dish rice. Sometimes that woman , M/s Chap-Chai-Ben, with the sinister look charges you $3.30, because she was menstruating or she was just bitchy that morning as she had not slept with her husband for a long while.
Mr Chap-Chai-Ben needs your $3.00 because he needs to pay for his monthly stall rental, his mortgage on his HDB flat, his PUB utilities, his StarHub telecommunication and his Honda Civic car. Incidentally after toting up our monthly bill, we would invariably discover that three-quarters of it accrue to national state boards or privatised national state boards (sorry if this sounds oxy-moronic). The Honda Civic however falls in private hands unless Honda Civic goes bust one day and decides to call in a national state board to sit in with it to co-partake or re-partake the pecuniary constitution. The food he needs he can always lap up the spoils after all the customers have had their fill.
$3.00 may be a small amount but going by a day count of hungry customers, this easily snowballs into 120 plates of dish rice translating in 360 dollar terms. Multiply that by 28, 29, 30 or 31 days and you come close to between $10 080 and $11 160 in a month.
Now if we follow this New World Order and we do not have to pay for our food or all the encumberances of rental, mortgages, utilities, telecommunication and car, then wouldn't we be freed of work and the wage that was meant to pay for these and our groceries, funeral rites and
sarcophagi in the first place?
I am not advocating a barter-trade system though this may be a viable option should this free-loading system not work in some cases, especially at the international level.
Nationally, all the private operators would function like one huge, colossal hypermart of fun-fair traders, dispensing free goodies and freebies. They do not have to pay wages as the proletariat works for free because he, in return, lives for free, eats for free, shits for free and dies for free. Isn't this a free-loading good system?
Internationally, the system works the same. Raw materials could be obtained for free from resource-rich neighbors who needs that foreign capital, imprimis, because it had to use this foreign exchange to fuel its domestic economy. It could instead barter in exchange for its needs or better still, obtain free goods it needs from its other neighbors.
This New World free-loading order will call for some contrivance and collusion on the part of member states. If it does, it will be Sir Thomas More's Utopian dreams come true. It can only mean people, who are at the heart of all civilisations, will live longer, happier, healthier and more civilly.
What a happenstance state of affairs! I think I am going off for work at the United Nations to advocate this new world system.
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