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I put a post on Vox
YES VOX! It's my Cambodia travelogue. READ IT AND WEEP
Scenario of faith
Let's imagine you are dead, and against all odds, you have a soul, which floats to a pearlescent palace in the clouds that strongly resembles an ethereal Disneyworld. Heaven, perhaps. A powerful presence sits on a throne in front of you. It is all-powerful and soothing. It feels like every single religious and drug-related experience condensed into one and multiplied a million times. You might be in the presence of a being commonly referred to as God. The light is so bright you close your eyes, and in your vision you see a figure, who looks rather like the guy in Mel Gibson's movie in Aramaic. Except not naked. He speaks in a gentle yet powerful voice. "Do you accept that Jesus Christ is God and your Lord and Saviour?" he asks. What do you say? If you were Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, Shino, whatever? Do you have some strong belief in the complete rightness of your mortal learnings that you would say no? And Christians, are you so certain this is not one last chance by some other vengeful God, some twisted final test, where a "no" will bring eternal bliss and "yes" the hell that was supposed to be due the heathens?
WWJD
At work, I am talking to Av** about how sniffy I am. She's been on MC and I am blaming her for my cold. Other colleague seems fascinated. "The two of you seem pretty sick," she said. "I blame Av," I reply. Later she comes over and talks to Av. "Hey, if you guys don't mind? Can I pray for you to get better? I need to practise praying for healing," she said. "I'd rather you give me $2 so I can get some meds from the doctor," I didn't say.
Vibrations
Standing by the road, waiting for the company bus to go home. 2 am, I am tired, the phone in my pocket vibrates. It's a feeling that strikes fear into me. It usually means work. I pull out the phone, I see it's my home calling. "How come you're not home yet?" asked my mum. She sounds sleepy. "Work mah," I reply, slightly annoyed. "So late?" "It's normal what." "Still must call mah. Scare me so late still not home." "Okay." The bus is fast today, and I get off at the bus stop, my usual stop. I am feeling sorry for being terse. I should have been glad. There will come the day when there is no one left who cares whether you come home or not. Then you are truly alone.
Press Conferences and spelling interviews as intw
I suppose I should make an update. Anyone still reading, though? -- RT In Singapore we have a ritual. After a certain age, men who are weak and useless are made STRONG by government compulsion. They are herded into camps for two days each week where they are made to run around with other losers. It is called Remedial Training. Mother Singapore loves us. She wants us to have tight buns. -- MC Press Conferences In Singapore there is a media corporation, whose name is a blend of media and corp. It runs most of the television and radio stations here, and most of its products are as bland as its name. Sometimes, they hold press conferences for print media like us. Today, there was LNX and ZT, the so-called Ah Ge and Ah Jie of Caldecott Hill. There were also a bunch of others, constellations of lesser stars circling in their penumbra. I hate, hate, hate having to talk to these people. It is a pain in the butt. It is such a hateful game. Let's be honest. We hate them and they hate us. We pretend to be nice even as we mock each other to our individual circles for lameness and triteness. Ah fuck it I'm too lazy to write about it since I still have to write an article on it. --- Tata Young Tata Young is close to my heart, because of certain events in Laos. (See Laos entry for details). So yesterday, I had the chance to meet her, and some of the most annoying PR people on the planet. Seriously. 1. "Hi, can I check if you're gonna ask about the Britney Spears thing?'' "Uh, well, I've on question at the end that..." "Because, you see, they're all like really sick of the Britney question? Since in Malaysia that's all they were asking." It's not an important question for me. "Sure." But what if it was the crux of my story? Shouldn't you have told me this WAY before I turned up at the interview? And it's not like Singaporeans read The Malay Mail -- it's a question that has relevance. (Well, not really, but what about mass produced pop-dance-hiphop squeal queens has relevance anyway.) It's your bloody job to answer our queries. So I sneaked in a Britney Spears question anyway. 2. "Okay, you have 15 mins." "Uh, only 15 mins? Including photo?" "Well there was no request for a photoshoot, so yes." (Thinks, isn't it usually normal to have photoshoots along with intws? Even in a country run by dictatorial military juntas?) Later... "Can I find out what your angle is?" (90 degrees to the velocity of her pooping.) "Uh, some Bollywood stuff and about her music video." "Can we have a more balanced story? Please talk about her album." "Of course we will have details on her album, but you know, we need to go in specifics, we can't just..." "Please have a more balanced angle, write more about the songs..." (Fuck you bitch you made me wait for one hour, give me just 15 mins for intw, and expect me to still ask stupid bland softball questions about the album?) "Yeah." She leaves room. Photog, a veteran, turns to me. "Nowadays the PR are so demanding, keep trying to determine what we should write. Last time they weren't like that." Luckily most of the PRs from the film comps are pro. ALSO: Tata isn't that hot when she isn't rolling in mud in her underwear. Much hotter girls around in Singapore, honestly.
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
Memories memories memories. All that counts is those bits in your head you set to music that sends tingles through your skin and fire through your fingers. Sharp shards of remembrance that come unbidding even between dull enveloping walls. Sparks in the narrow fog-haunted night. What keeps you alive through the rest of it. Everything else is just exposition. Mine's just a moment, just two people whispering beneath a sea of fireworks exploding in the sky. I just have to close my eyes.
Happiness is a warm cat
You should always heat up your food.
Miss Gee --- by W H Auden
Let me tell you a little story About Miss Edith Gee; She lived in Clevedon Terrace At number 83. She'd a slight squint in her left eye, Her lips they were thin and small, She had narrow sloping shoulders And she had no bust at all. She'd a velvet hat with trimmings, And a dark grey serge costume; She lived in Clevedon Terrace In a small bed-sitting room. She'd a purple mac for wet days, A green umbrella too to take, She'd a bicycle with shopping basket And a harsh back-pedal break. The Church of Saint Aloysius Was not so very far; She did a lot of knitting, Knitting for the Church Bazaar. Miss Gee looked up at the starlight And said, 'Does anyone care That I live on Clevedon Terrace On one hundred pounds a year?' She dreamed a dream one evening That she was the Queen of France And the Vicar of Saint Aloysius Asked Her Majesty to dance. But a storm blew down the palace, She was biking through a field of corn, And a bull with the face of the Vicar Was charging with lowered horn. She could feel his hot breath behind her, He was going to overtake; And the bicycle went slower and slower Because of that back-pedal break. Summer made the trees a picture, Winter made them a wreck; She bicycled to the evening service With her clothes buttoned up to her neck. She passed by the loving couples, She turned her head away; She passed by the loving couples, And they didn't ask her to stay. Miss Gee sat in the side-aisle, She heard the organ play; And the choir sang so sweetly At the ending of the day, Miss Gee knelt down in the side-aisle, She knelt down on her knees; 'Lead me not into temptation But make me a good girl, please.' The days and nights went by her Like waves round a Cornish wreck; She bicycled down to the doctor With her clothes buttoned up to her neck. She bicycled down to the doctor, And rang the surgery bell; 'O, doctor, I've a pain inside me, And I don't feel very well.' Doctor Thomas looked her over, And then he looked some more; Walked over to his wash-basin, Said,'Why didn't you come before?' Doctor Thomas sat over his dinner, Though his wife was waiting to ring, Rolling his bread into pellets; Said, 'Cancer's a funny thing. 'Nobody knows what the cause is, Though some pretend they do; It's like some hidden assassin Waiting to strike at you. 'Childless women get it. And men when they retire; It's as if there had to be some outlet For their foiled creative fire.' His wife she rang for the servent, Said, 'Dont be so morbid, dear'; He said: 'I saw Miss Gee this evening And she's a goner, I fear.' They took Miss Gee to the hospital, She lay there a total wreck, Lay in the ward for women With her bedclothes right up to her neck. They lay her on the table, The students began to laugh; And Mr. Rose the surgeon He cut Miss Gee in half. Mr. Rose he turned to his students, Said, 'Gentlemen if you please, We seldom see a sarcoma As far advanced as this.' They took her off the table, They wheeled away Miss Gee Down to another department Where they study Anatomy. They hung her from the ceiling Yes, they hung up Miss Gee; And a couple of Oxford Groupers Carefully dissected her knee.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Listening to my Beatles collection today, and I played one of my favourite tunes of all time, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Yes, that George Harrison composed song all proper Beatles fans seem to hate. I went to Wikipedia and looked up the entry for the song, and I discovered something that made me put my hands on my face like Macaulay Culkin did in Home Alone: Apparently the awesome solo was played by Eric "Motherfucking Eric Clapton" Clapton! Man, I LOVE that fucking solo (listen to any Wubai album and there's at least one song where the China Blue lead singer seemed to have ripped that solo off). **is fighting urge to go and buy random Clapton CD**
Even if just a great story
(This is an Umberto Eco quote.) But you say that, without the example and the word of Christ, all lay ethics would lack a basic justification imbued with an ineluctable power of conviction. Why deprive laypersons of the right to avail themselves of the example of a forgiving Christ? Try, Carlo Maria Martini, for the good of the discussion and of the dialogue in which you believe, to accept even if only for a moment the idea that there is no God; that man appeared in the world out of a blunder on the part of maladroit fate, delivered not only unto his mortal condition but also condemned to be aware of this, and for this reason the most imperfect of all creatures (if I may be permitted the echoes of Leopardi in this suggestion). This man, in order to find the courage to await death, would necessarily become a religious animal, and would aspire to the construction of narratives capable of providing him with an explanation and a model, an exemplary image. And among the many stories he imagines -— some dazzling, some awe-inspiring, some pathetically comforting -— in the fullness of time he has at a certain point the religious, moral, and poetic strength to conceive the model of Christ, of universal love, of forgiveness for enemies, of a life sacrificed that others may be saved. If I were a traveler from a distant galaxy and I found myself confronted with a species capable of proposing this model, I would be filled with admiration for such theogonic energy, and I would judge this wretched and vile species, which has committed so many horrors, redeemed were it only for the fact that it has managed to wish and to believe that all this is the truth. You are now free to leave the hypothesis to others: but admit that even if Christ were only the subject of a great story, the fact that this story could have been imagined and desired by humans, creatures who know only that they do not know, would be just as miraculous (miraculously mysterious) as the son of a real God’s being made flesh. This natural and worldly mystery would not cease to move and ennoble the hearts of those who do not believe.
Smokey The Bear Sutra (by Gary Snyder, a 1969 poem)
Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings — even grasses, to the number of thirteen billions, each one born from a seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth. "In some future time, there will be a continent called America. It will have great centers of power called such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur, Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature." "The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger: and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it." And he showed himself in his true form of
Wrathful but Calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him,
Thus his great Mantra:
And he will protect those who love woods and rivers, Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children. And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL:
And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.
thus have we heard. (may be reproduced free forever)
Bees!
 Random picture day
writing *the act of* is searing away the desire to *do so* / repetition is a quenching flame
What is good, Phaedrus? And what is not good? Need we anyone to tell us these things?
Reminder to self: Purchase latest Dawkins book
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7939629
Redang
The first thing you notice about Pulau Redang's water is your feet. "Hey man, look at this," said KK, my fellow traveller, in awe. "You can see your toes in the water!" I look down. I do see them, pink and yellow and crisscrossed with refracted sunlight beneath the waves. I also see the shitload of dead coral that's deposited on the beach with each wave, marring the clean, fine sand. They stab at my soles when I walk but if I try to remove them and take them home I can go to jail for fucking with the environment. I touch the water with my fingers and I sniff. It smells salty, but clean. In Singapore the seas have a strong, stinging taste, like Dettol mixed with soy sauce and urine, and are filled with a deadly, glutinous mass of poisonous jellyfish that populate the waters since the demise of all vertebrate marine life by the shoreline. Here, the water is pleasant. No jellyfish. I wade out, and KK yells that he saw fish darting about. Fish. Fish in the sea. What a thought. Getting to Pulau Redang, a resort island and marine sanctuary in the South China Sea some 45km offshore from Terengganu, Malaysia, is a pain. KK and I went by coach from Singapore. I hadn't gone home to change my clothes or wash up and I felt gross and sweaty. We boarded the bus at 10.30pm last Friday and it left Golden Mile on the dot. The airconditioning that blasted through the bus sent its passengers into quivering, fitful sleep. For the first time in my life, I discovered how it feels to have slick armpits and chattering teeth at the same time. Never again. We were like a shipment of chilled pork, heading north on dark roads. We arrived at the jetty, overflowing with tourists, half a day later. It was 9 am. Because we forgot to register at the counter for a ferry ticket, we had to take one 15 mins later than the one we should have. The boat took an hour to reach the island. We were taken to an open hall near the terminal where an excitable Malay lad briefed the restless and exhausted army of visitors on the itinerary and the wonderful facilities of Laguna Redang Island Resort. A hearty buffet lunch followed, for our rooms were not yet ready. We only made it to our quarters at 12.30pm. To our relief, it was clean, and had a poolside view. I would have collapsed on my bed there and then if I were not then the singularly most filthy human being alive. So I went to the bathroom instead. The water that poured out of the shower at a rate just a notch higher than a trickle was warm - and sheer bliss. I wanted to sleep. KK wanted to go to the beach. To the beach, then. -- Snorkelling was the reason we went, and the island of Redang is blessed with that bounty of coral reefs and baby sharks that make tourists splash out foreign currencies and give governments the will to repel Japanese trawlers. But snorkelling is gross when you have to rent equipment. First, you are supposed to slather saliva on the mask to prevent it from fogging, and second, you're supposed to put the snorkel in your mouth and bite on it. Imagine a hundred dudes using it before you. It's like chewing on used bubble gum. But when you drop into the warm-cool waters and witness for the first time the spiky horn-like coral that sprout from a sea-bed shimmering with life, you forget anything else exists beyond this watery domain, at least until salty water creeps inside your mask, which you forgot to tighten properly, and into your nose, and you snort, flailing in the waves, like a deranged mime. Of course, KK and I weren't the only ones there. Let's not bother with the professional divers from the resort - one and all they fitted the stereotype of "beach boy" - but the fellow tourists. Let's ignore the men, because most of them were fat and ugly and wore pretty much the same thing. The women, however, were interesting. I divided them into the Bikinis and the Tudungs, depending on what they wore. There weren't too many hot Bikinis, though some did catch the eye. But there were a couple of fat ones or ones with strange markings (like an angmoh woman with a weird flower of black, vein-like lines in a patch on her back) which, if I were in any way religious, would make me pray for the eradication of cellulite. So many tubby thighs. The Tudungs, on the other hand, were uncompromising in the defence of their modesty. They wore a strange, almost comical combination of wetsuit, t-shirt, pants, and head-scarf. With their snorkels on, they resembled underwater ninja/farmers. None of them were any good looking. When one pulls herself unto a boat after a dip, sometimes the headscarf gets dragged off by its own sodden weight. I saw one of them valiantly tugging at the cloth, trying to cover exposed hair. Of course, nobody other than them cared about whether we saw hair or not. But I admired them - sitting on a boat, their backs to the ocean, with damp cloth on their heads dripping into their faces. I would have found it cold and dreary. But such are the comforts of faith.
Is it safe to blog about Sep 11 yet?
It is reflexive and understandable to resist the tyranny of free trade, imposed on the many by an elite, and its many injustices, all done in the name of an ideology which has little scientific value and has resulted in a world no more peaceful or more wealthy, except for a select few. It is expressed as a robust American imperialism, backed by guns and loans. And I think we are duty-bound to resist it in what ways we can. But it is not true that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. One cannot be progressive by standing on the side of medieval fundy jihadists whose idea of progress is regress, all the way back to 630 AD, who would divide the world between belief and unbelief, who believe that the only workable system is a radical Islamism, who would impose on us a world that has no place for dancing, or painting, or equality. One must spit on both.
630AD
I just saw a message through the newsroom computer system. It was about the phrase "Mecca for shopping". The editor was telling us to be sensitive. -- Do not use Mecca as a reference unless we are talking about THE Mecca. -- Apparently it's sensitive in the local context. Madness. Madness. Madness. Stop killing perfectly good metaphors, even one as overused as that one. IS LAM CHEE LEONG IN THE BUILDING? *** I recently interviewed a Malay girl, who went to London and got hooked on New Age from a Peruvian artist. She visited temples, and got really into the whole spiritual stuff, meditation, all that. Is she still Muslim? Who knows. What does it matter, really? Anyway, I submitted the draft, and got told to delete all that. I'm not complaining about it. My ed's point - and it's quite correct - was not so much that we can't write it, but that we would get that girl into trouble with members of her community. It felt to me fairly trivial stuff. I mean, there are Sufis out there who get into more esoteric stuff, surely. When did those guys stop being Muslims? When did Iran-Saudi Arabia win? For the love of Mecha-Buddha, whether that girl wants to be a good follower or a bad follower or drink alcohol or not drink alcohol or dance nude in a forest ceremony to sacred Gaia is not your bloody business, ummah or not. --- However, would a film like 'Monty Python's Life of Brian,' criticized at the time of its release for being anti-Christian, be judged under the proposed law? Or that excellent joke in 'Not the Nine O'Clock news' all those years ago, showing worshippers in a mosque simultaneously bowing to the ground with the voiceover: 'And the search goes on for the Ayatollah Khomeini's contact lens'? Not respectful, but comedy takes no prisoners. However, in period and in context it was extremely funny and I believe that it is the reaction of the audience that should decide the appropriateness of a joke, not the law of the land. -- Rowan Atkinson
It's Another Lyrics Post We All So Hate
DEMONS, Super Furry Animals Clarity just confuses me The lines drawn on a map, a strange assembly When there's northeners in southeners And westenders in eastenders And sunny days in January Left spaces in my diary But the demons never need to know What the demons never got to see As we fall in and out of line Stay in touch now for a while Cos I know that apathy only ruined me Hanging around waiting for calamity And by the year four million Our skins will be vermilion I own a dartboard memory So I'll forget any felony But the demons never need to know What the demons never got to see As we fall in and out of line Stay in touch now for a while Cos I know that you know That we know they don't know what's going on But the demons never need to know What the demons never got to see As we fall in and out of line Stay in touch now for a while But the demons never need to read What we never got around to write A flirt with mediocrity comes with a heavy penalty Cos I know that you know That we know they don't know what's going on...
Does rationality exist?
Too often, we have too much faith in the rationality of people, which leads to such absurd beliefs like that of a so-called invisible hand that guides market forces to benign ends when everywhere there is only chaos, and in the case of the Enrons of the world, actual evil. The unleashing of unrestrained capitalism has only caused more depravation to the poorest people in the world. Then there is of course religion too, with believers as plentiful as bacteria in the sea. Where people recognise in petty little cults the madness of sheep, most seem unable to see the same insanity in the established religions, which are but cults with political and social power. Early on, a clever muse even asserted that, if so many believe, there must be something right about that belief. But sometimes the more insane a notion, the more popular it becomes. Surely the Nazis should be proof enough of that. Or the dot.com bubble of the late 90s. Or any conversation with a fundamentalist. How can the mullahs call for the destruction of Israel, admire Nazis, applaud terror, and yet some of us inevitably link it as merely a reaction to American imperialism, when the facts stare us in the face that Islamism, if anything, is potentially a more malignant force than what it says it opposes, its relative mildness on a global scale the result only of its own impotence and not goodwill?
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