The trouble with danger

I am in Caracas, consistently rated among the top 10 most dangerous cities in the world. (One does not tell the parents this of course.) It is an city embraced by mountains. You wake up seeing the green mountains nudge the billowing clouds, the way one might half-heartedly push away the bedsheets in the morning. At night, the mountains flicker romantically from the lights of the hundreds of houses stacked on them. It might well have been San Francisco.

Except that many of the houses are crime-ridden shanty towns that even the police avoid patrolling. Except that it is a city where our office has a cash machine (not inside the building, but inside the office - beside Sofia's cubicle).

At lunch yesterday, the other girl and I were lightly chided by a fellow foreigner for bringing our very modest handbags. 'I carry nothing here, only a card and some cash,' declared the American man proudly.

'But you're a man. For me, there's the makeup, the water... And the local girls all carry bags too,' protested the American women.

Out came the ultimate trump card: 'But it only takes one incident.'

It is true of course. There is apparently a woman in the office whose husband has been kidnapped for sixty days. In Caracas, there are still three express kidnappings a day, down from five.

But if we take such a reasoning to its logical end, we would be mobilised into inaction. The trouble with danger is not so much the consequence of the danger (being hurt), but the multitude of possibilities (carrying a handbag, wearing earrings...) that may cause the onset of that danger. Today it is not carrying a handbag, tomorrow is not wearing heels, and the day after is not going out for dinner - because anything can happen.

I am not suggesting foolhardiness. This trip, there is no SLR. Yet at the same time, I really struggle with OTT self-censorship. Beyond a certain point, one has to just leave it to prayers - if you are religious, or hope - if you are not.




Camera-phone series #31. Straight out of the camera.

The TPL phenomenon

When I was 6, there was once when I had to choose between staying over at my aunt's place or going to Sentosa the next day with my cousin. I still remember that day very clearly. I was babysat by my aunt, very close to her and her family, and did not want to go back to my parents' home that Friday. My mother gave me a choice: stay over, or forfeit the Sentosa trip. She warned me, sternly and a few times, that I could only choose one.

The desire for immediate gratification being urgent and immediate the way they tend to be, I told her I wanted to stay over. I thought that I would be able to convince her the next day to let me go to Sentosa if I begged hard enough.

The next day, I begged, begged and begged. She did not relent. I cried my eyes out. She did not relent. I think I even skipped lunch in profuse tears after I saw my cousin leave the house. She did not relent. The family thought it was rather harsh of my mother, but still my mother dug her heels in.

That day, I learnt that when you choose, you have to live with your choice.

I therefore have some bones to pick with the whole TPL phenomenon. The rules of the elections were very clear - when you vote, you vote in a party of four. It is all or nothing, and there is absolutely no ambiguity about that. You cannot say that you only want one of the four, because it is not the rules of the game. If one were so unhappy with the GRC rules, one should have been more active in lobbying for the change instead of leaving it to others . If one were still that unhappy, then one would simply have to vote against that entire team and/or go on a crusade to convince residents in Marine Parade. There is no two ways about it, and that is the way life is.

For this reason, I did not sign any petition calling for the resignation of TPL (or for the re-election of CST for that matter). I cannot say at all that I have been impressed by TPL, but the people of Marine Parade have chosen for themselves, and consequently for Singapore. To give another analogy, if you knew your boyfriend has a pesky mother, then it is a case of caveat emptor before you marry him. I think it would be unreasonable to ask him to disown his mother after you are married.

In response to my objections, some people have countered that even if TPL has been democratically elected, she should still step down in light of the public displeasure against her. Should she? To be fair, the only two things she has done wrong is to have posted those kawaii photos and silly suggestions about holding down hawker prices down . She has not committed any grave offences, whether civil or criminal. There is doubt in her ability to deliver (in which case you should have taken that into account when you voted), but I am not aware of any tenable reason for her to resign.

What seems to have happened is that a mob has gathered against her. Unfortunately, mobs are not driven by logic but by the adrenaline of the moment. She has, not out of her conscious choosing, become a celebrity like Paris Hilton. Not a celebrity politician, but a celebrity whose existence is to entertain a bored public. It is a difficult starting point to be in, but I hope for our future in the next five years that she overcomes it. At the very least, the TPL phenomenon will clearly remind us that when we choose, we have to live with our choices. Or to put it in more blunt terms: citizens in a democracy deserve the government they have.

李公言重了

设使国家无有孤，
不知几人造反，几人亡国。

-- 改自曹操《述志令》

»"A generation that does not remember from whence we came" 读后感。

宰相肚内可乘船

今天从翁老先生那儿学到了新俗语。

读者有兴趣可以追踪»他的博客。博客主人翁老先生从前算是响当当的人物。听说他八十几岁了，但说话仍一针见血，看了真令我这种晚辈汗颜。

被安逸收买了

在动荡中长大的孩子，义无反顾地追求安逸，只能说是无可厚非。

在安逸中长大的孩子，还只是义无反顾地追求安逸，只能说是被安逸收买了。

蔚蓝的天

我的小国再过两周就要投选了。身在大国的我近几天看了许多政治评论、许多人物专访、许多国民的心声感言，觉得特别亢奋。原来新加坡人还是有血有肉的。就凭此，我的小国将前途无量！

Camera-phone series #27.   This is the Chilterns on a summer day, »somewhere near the Whipsnade lion.

Not immediately obvious

Camera-phone series #24.

Patina at Dachau

Dachau was a very difficult place for me. (Which may explain why I have put off sorting out the photos for such a long time.) It is not comfortable to come face to face with mankind's capacity for cruelty. It is equally not comfortable to realise that it is not just "them", but it could very well be us who are complicit in such cruelty.

»This is Dachau.

Cambodia hospitality

[»slideshow embedded]

When I mentioned that I was going to Siem Reap to attend a conference, an ex-colleague related the story of how he was personally thanked by the Cambodian trade minister as a junior customs officer many years ago. He and his mate had gone to conduct something like a 3-day capacity building course for the Cambodian Customs. Almost at the end of the training, their counterpart came over to whisper to them that their minister would like to meet the both of them to thank them personally. So there they were, in a big ministerial office, face to face with Mr Cham Prasit.

Mr Cham Prasit is of course now the Deputy Prime Minister. But humility, like hospitality, is seldom forgotten.

Singaporeans I met today

A nurse at the hospital, who proudly told me that her son is studying in London too. "Imperial College," she beams.

A blind man selling tissue, who probably has been standing for hours. He greeted me cheerfully and just before I left, said: "It's raining you know. You have umbrella?"

A Malay taxi driver, who told about his family history as we crawled through a jammed CTE. "My grandfather was Chinese also. Guangdong Province, he was a Muslim from Guangdong Province."

Our lives, our history, our dreams.

Sunday in Munich

Good old fun. No malls required.

Determination

Also part of the procession,  Slowly but surely, they got there.

At the Sargent by the Sea exhibition today, Mr C and I saw another moving case of determination.  This old lady had a large-print booklet of the explanations on little plaques beside the paintings. She read the large print with a magnifying glass.  To see the paintings, she put on a pair of special glasses around her neck.  The glasses had two sets of lenses stacked, about 5 cm apart.  She alternated between these two methods of seeing, for each painting.

It occurred to me that she must be almost blind, probably seeing just swatches of colours.

I was heartened by the fact that the the Royal Academy of Arts was thoughtful enough to provide aids and facilities for the less able.   Mr C said that the more heartening bit is her determination, because it takes much more for a person to decide to get out of the house and make use of these aids. 

He is right of course.

Freedom to assemble

This rowdy procession of children passed by my window sometime in early July.  (The guy at the back of the procession - in a highlighter yellow vest - is a policeman.)

In London, they learn about their rights from a young age.  Rightly so, before political apathy sets in.

Where are you from, darling?

"Where are you from, darling?"

"Singapore!"

"Singapore... Malaya? You know Malaya?"

"Yes of course."

"I was there from '52 to '54. Youngest soldier. I was 16 when I was recruited."

"Oh my, 16."

"Oh, Malaya was a wonderful place. It was very humid, but the people are so friendly. I had a wonderful time, when I was not on duty. There was a General Hospital in Kuala Lumpur. You know Kuala Lumpur? There were many pretty nurses there. My mate had to stay there for a while and he really enjoyed it."

"Lucky him!" Laughter.

"Did you go out with them?" Cheeky look.

A pause.

"No. But I used to go out with this girl from Malaya. She was Chinese, like you. We went out for a long time. Almost the whole two years. And when I had to come back to England, I asked her to come with me. She said no. Her family - her mother, her sister - they were all in Malaya. She didn't come back with me."

"Ohh. Oh dear."

"Many years later, I got married, to a very lovely lady and we moved out here to London. Not far from where we are now, you know. (Inaudible street name) We lived in an apartment building. Not long after I moved in, this young lady stopped me outside my house and said, 'I know you. I have seen you somewhere.' I said, 'I beg your pardon. I don't think we have met before.'"

"Was it one of the nurses?"

"No it wasn't. A couple of weeks later, I was walking my youngest daughter, heading back home, when I bumped into the young lady again. She stopped me, and she said, 'I know you. My mother knows you. You are Patrick.' And then she pulls up this photo of me and her mother together."

"It was the Malayan girl I used to go out with."

"Oh my god. Was her mother in London too?"

"No, she stayed on in Malaya."

"Did she ever visit after? Did you write to her?"

"No, I don't think she ever came to London. Just her daughter came."

"And you know... We are both married. My wife is the most wonderful lady in the world, and we have children. Oh, she is such a darling, my wife."

"No yes, I am sure she is very wonderful."

A pause. I continued:

"It's ironical that she didn't want to come to London, but the daughter came instead."

"Yes..."

"But that's life, you know."

"Yes... I was going to say that too. Life's lament."

One smile. And then two.

Life's lament, fond thoughts.

(Singing in the Rain music in the background)

A city like this

7.15 pm on a summer Saturday, Bus 55 chugged merrily along. Somewhere near Goodge Street, I stopped daydreaming.

A lady standing on the pavement was earnestly pleading with the bus driver with many variations of 'Please, pleeeease wait, she is coming right now'. Presumably an old folk.

A pause. About twenty pair of eyes waited to see who it was.

But suddenly, the bus started moving. Everyone let out a hugely disapproving 'Ohh!'.

It was so disapproving that the person standing nearest to the bus-driver had to defend him: 'He's just pulling over to wait for her.'

And then a collective 'Ahh'.

Three seconds later, the heroine stepped up onto the bus. The punkish-looking teenage girl nearest to the entrance stood up from her seat.

(I have great respect for punkish-looking folks; they are often the most decent people.)

When I'm 70 and walk like a snail, a city like this is where I'd like to be.




Clarification: London is not the city like this. I'm happy to say I've written several letters over the years (often prompted by my mum) to commend bus drivers in Singapore for their kindness. One particularly stood out. He didn't just stop and wait. He got out of his driver seat, helped the shakey 80-year-old passenger to a seat then got back in to drive on.

Fear mongering

Such as »this is not just analysis. It is irresponsible.

So what's the point of doomsday predictions with no solutions? To tell everyone to short Greece? So that the prophecy will fulfil itself and you can become famous?

Tragedy of the commons

If the shared printer runs out of paper, is it the responsibility of the last person who caused it to run out to refill it, or is it that of the unlucky person who next tries to print?

Today I refilled it and also taped up the annoying cover which keeps falling off. Then someone returned my favorite sock which I had left behind in the dryer.

It's nice when people take the trouble.

(But humans tend to try to get away with doing as little as possible. We're all a bit shitty that way.)

Contributions to the world

#1: Making my 70-year-old aunt cry with laughter
(I share this honour with my dad.)

#2: Helping people in libraries, shops and homes reach for the high shelves
(Happened even in Germany; I was quite flattered.)

#3: Making complex subjects accessible to laymen
(E.g. healthcare, economics. Seems like more needs to be done - one of my young students wanted to deny miners voting rights for central bankers because he thinks central bank policies are too difficult for the former to comprehend.)

The poverty of morality

I came across this when proofreading Ms F's personal statement the other day. She worried about the poverty of morality in our age, about our children who would grow up to be gifted scientists, brilliant bankers and powerful businessmen without a moral compass.

It is an issue I had I alluded to »previously and which occupies my mind every so often. In the notebook that I carry around, I had the following scribbled:

"These days, it has become fashionable to be blasé. To reduce everything to: 'Oh, it's all relative.' It is the one evergreen balm for our conscience if it is ever pricked by something we do. It has  become politically incorrect, even bigoted to suggest that someone is wrong.  For how can anyone be wrong?"

I was recently propositioned to write essays for an essay mill (i.e. to do someone's homework) for £100 per essay. I was tempted, but eventually I said no.

Perhaps this is why I will remain poor. Or in fact, maybe I am not poor enough, because as someone remarked earlier this afternoon, "We are all prostitutes. It is all a matter of price."

*    *    *

I now return to my half-watched Episode One of the Harvard Justice series: http://www.justiceharvard.org/. Do yourself a favour and watch it too (at least the trailer bit on the homepage). Michael Sandel is very provocative and it's interesting to hear how the students' comments on the moral dilemma.

Ms F: One small step that Harvard is taking to assuage your worry.

Take Harry and Sally to Sunday tea

This wonderful ad appeared in the tube stations about two weeks ago. I've just made contact with them to see how I can help with neither a car nor an apartment here.

Next time when I am old, I hope someone takes me out for tea in a bike or a sidecar! :)

If you are interested, this is »a video of what goes on in these tea parties.