Letter writing to the ST

Reading the Straits Times everyday still, I am struck by the consistency of quality letters published in the Forum page. They remind me so much of those Secondary school 'complaint letters' that I used to mark. Either these letter writers never grow up or they were such good students they never forgot what their teachers taught them. Maybe in remembrance of their wonderful childhood memories and enduring admiration of their former teachers they attempt to relive those happy years by writing love letters to the Straits Times praising the gahmen to the skies. 

Now I see the importance of brainwashing teaching Singaporeans when they're still young, and indoctrinating inculcating them with the right Singaporean values: study hard, work hard, be eternally thankful to the government for everything on earth, and please retire in JB when you can no longer work thankyouverymuch. 

Sometimes I really think that Singaporeans are dumb because of the education system AND reading the Straits Times. Singaporeans have so much potential to be better and more intelligent...

In the spirit of upgrading and self-improvement before you get banished to JB's luxurious nursing homes, and given my wealth of experience in marking these sort of exercises, as well as my irresistable urge to admire ST propaganda on a daily basis, I am providing what I think is an even better template for sending letters to the Straits Times. Try practising a few times and send them in while you apply for your overseas PR and assorted migration papers. Your improved English in the process will be an invaluable advantage when being considered for permanent residency abroad.

The names and places can be changed of course, but the rules of thumb are: 1) provide as much unnecessary details and useless information as possible (long-windedness is a plus in this instance), 2) express as much indignance and righteous rage as possible, 3) remind our fellowmen that Singapore is a first-world country, and 4) invoke national catastrophe and unavoidable perdition if such tragic incidents are left unchecked. 

For example:

I write to express my anger/disgust/alarm after surviving one of my worst dining experiences. On Tuesday at 1p.m where the sun was shining and the breeze was calm, my friends and I went to X Y Z restaurant that is situated at the second corner from the third turning off Too Lan Road. After waiting for a good 15 minutes, the waitress finally ushered us to the table by the window, as opposed to the other tables not by any window. We sat down and had a look through the menu. I was thinking of ordering Mee Siam. I have heard from many of my friends, colleagues, family members, and even complete strangers in the MRT and on the Internet that this eatery is famous for its Mee Siam.  [unnecessary info & useless details: tick]

But imagine my horror when the menu stated that the famous Mee Siam dish comes with cockles! Look, this is utterly ridiculous. Mee Siam dishes do not come with cockles! Indignantly, I summoned the manager to the table [Indignance: tick]. I duly informed her that they were making a serious mistake and insulting our local cuisine. I said I would order the dish nonetheless, but only if the Mee Siam did not have cockles. So I was shocked when she told me that this would be impossible. She related how this innocent local dish gained national fame a few years ago after being introduced on national TV by a prominent cabinet minister. [note: 'shocked' is a very useful word. Use it generously whenever you can. Rule of thumb: if it aint shocking, it aint worth writing.]

However, I was adamant that there should be no cockles in my Mee Siam. I am a very conservative Singaporean, and I strongly believe national cuisines, just like our national values, should never be adulterated and impugned. Cockles, however delicious and tempting they may be, should remain where they are. Can you imagine if Section 377A of our penal code was repealed? Can you imagine the endless cockles being shoved into our dishy Mee Siams? Mee Siam today, Back Chor Me tomorrow? Soon, our country would be invaded by cockles left right centre, front and back! [Righteous rage: tick]

Unfortunately, the manager remained equally adamant that their brand of Mee Siam not be besmirched, and insisted that I try their specialty. 

I think this is extremely absurd. Is it so difficult to request that a harm-less dish of Mee Siam not be added with cockles? Singapore is a first-world nation with first-class infrastructure, and it has one of the highest GDP per capita in the world. We have a cohesive, well-educated population with a strong track record of productivity and excellence that have contributed to building our large national reserves. Needless to say, all these are only possible with a well-trained armed forces, a harmonious tripartite labour movement, and an eternal ruling party. In addition, we have an independent judiciary, a responsible press, and our people are free to voice their opinions and speak truth to power with neither trepidation nor fear. All these have ensured that we have become gracious society, a garden city, and, it is worth repeating: a first-world nation with first-class infrastructure, with one of the highest GDP per capita in the world. All in all, Singapore is undoubtedly our home that we are proud of. As Singapore forges more good years ahead in the 21st century and enters another golden period as the premier global city of the arts, culture, and repression, it is time that Singaporeans be open to the idea that customers should have a say as to whether or not there are cockles in their Mee Siams. [First World Singapore etc. and neverending etc.: tick]

Cordon Tan Le Bleu

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This is only a guide, of course. For real examples, kindly refer to the Forum pages of the Straits Times on any day. 

___

Been a bit brain dead the last one week, after writing a string of articles singing praises about the PAP and the wonderful people of Singapore, so no energy to write florid poetic self-indulgent prose singing praises to the fluff of light snow that's been falling on England. (It's been snowing beautifully the last two weeks, and I must write about it soonish).

Note to my ex students:

When you kiddies grow up to acceptable age, I'll show you my other M18 blog that contains everything you need to ace your GP and thereafter attain your B.A. Hons degree in political science (majoring in PAP De(con)struction and Condemnation of Chronic Singaporean Stupidity). Should you wish to further your tertiary education in the said disciplines beyond the B.A., I'll be happy to supervise your MA or PhD theses provided I've become a tenured professor somewhere by then. 

fatherhood

I must have written about wanting to be a father. It's a recurring thought that has intensified over the last one or two years. I think age is slowly catching up, my decade-long wild student life is coming to an end, and that paternal instinct gradually forming within me. I like to think I'll make a good father; I have my own dad as a fine example, though I think I wouldn't be as quiet as him. Just as strict and gentle. Just nice. I have had a wonderful childhood and family as a guide, I love kids, and even angsty teenagers can tahan me, so I think I'll do alright huh. Plus I'll make sure my kid shall never be in want of bedtime stories, storybooks, and that occasional teddy bear. And the usual things, you know, fetching my kiddo from school, chat with my kiddo over the phone whilst being stuck at work, weekends to the beach or the zoo, watch my kiddo grow up, hear my kiddo call me 'dad'. Or if kiddo wishes, kiddo can just call me J. Anyway, when that time comes, I'll be the best dad that has ever lived. 

Some pics from Oslo

I drank so much that night, forgetting that I'd be the Big Three when morning comes, forgetting that my youth shall forever disappear, and along with it the ability to drink and party with nary a worry, and not least that there would be a splitting hangover the morning after. :) 

I'll post more pics when I get back to Australia. Forgot to bring my camera cable and so the pics are all living in my camera at the moment. 

新年快乐!

New year

It's actually been sometime since I sat down proper and wrote things down here. My last few entries have been written in a hurry, my mind elsewhere, myself heading elsewhere. I can't believe I've been on the move for the last three months, and the whole traipse across Europe just flash past my mind in a psychedelic blur lasting all of two seconds. I can't believe in a little more than a month, I'll be packing my last four months back into my suitcase, and get on that plane back to Sydney. When that time comes, and as I walk past the customs in Australia, I imagine I'd be feeling exactly like when I had just landed in Australia, last February, after departing from Singapore. Has it been a year already. 

I haven't really had the time to reflect about the ending year as I was putting up at my friends' place in Oslo, and had some pretty big dinner get togethers with their friends and family. It does seep my energy to put myself away and take on a more sociable persona, which is not my natural self. And before I know it, half of January has gone. 

What was 2008 for me like? That year opened with the ongoing ennui of being in Singapore, along with its attendant frustrations, until I left. I wouldn't say I had to adjust to a new environment, though I had only visited Sydney once some years back. But it was a new university, a new place I stayed, got to know many new friends, of course. Everyone was a new friend. I discovered that communal living was not for me, a little too late, but I got out in time. I suppose being a foreigner, the perfect accommodation is always going to be a problem, until you set up your own home. I got to know a lot of good people, who became rather close friends. We'd hang out over lunch and coffee at the lawn outside the library, or have a proper dinner somewhere up the hill or in the city, or go to a movie, or just chill out at home over a bottle of wine. They are mostly fellow PhD mates, struggling with the same problems like the non-existent thesis, the forever lazy arse, the neverending urge to read and never stop reading (and thus never start WRITING). We indulge in the constant bemoaning of our fates, though we really do enjoy it - the fates and the moanings. We all know why we whine, it's a necessary exercise of catharsis, of validation, of bonding. Then we feel better, and we return to our computers, surf a lot, read a lot, and type out thesis some, and the cycle returns. I'll never forget what L once told me over lunch, that "some people will never be happy until they submit their thesis three, four years down the road. But then, what's the point."

I try to bear that in mind, though I think for someone like me who's forever lazy, and very seldom unhappy (that's not to say I'm always happy. There's a state somewhere in-between, like bochup-ness, that accurately describes my permanent state of mind), his words in fact serve to remind me to try to be happier than I am. Happiness is subjective, I suppose. Some people need friends, or loved ones, or loud music, or a lot of alcohol. I'm happy when I wake up in the morning knowing that coffee is there in the making and milk and sugar are there for the adding. I'm happy knowing I'm doing the things I love, like studying. I'm happy when I know whenever I open a page, any page, of Winterson or Woolf, their words soothe my soul and send a shiver down my spine, their sentences draw out my ever last breath. I'm happy logging onto Youtube and indulging in Faye Wong's MVs for two hours, entirely amazed by how ethereally crystalline her voice is. I'm happy at the end of the day knowing I've done an honest day's job, even if I might wake up the next morning and trash the previous day's writings and start again. I'm happy when I can walk in the streets just being alone and being an anonymous face in the crowd. It really doesn't take much for one to be happy. Know the little things that make you happy, and surround yourself with them.

Actually I've been writing a lot, I just haven't posted them here, because I don't think it's relevant. This is a very personal space, and I say personal things here. Good friends read this space and know what's going on in my life. But there's another aspect of me, a more intellectually-driven, more political one, that needed an outlet for expression. I've found that outlet, and in a big way, discovered a lot about writing itself. I thought, by having a specific purpose to write, a specific target (and I don't mean just writing about what I ate this morning and what movie I watched etc), the writing has become more focused, less self-indulgent, and actually said and meant something. And of course, I realise I need to curb this habit of writing and saying things in this convoluted manner that actually can be expressed in simpler terms. I suppose not everyone can be a Saramago writing his endless sentences and win a Nobel. 

Most importantly, I thought simply by writing those pieces, my writing improved. Which is what I have believed all these while, that while reading is very important to improving your language skills, it's the actual writing, the very act of putting your thoughts onto paper, and constantly editing and re-editing what you have written, that you become better at writing, that that piece of writing becomes more polished. If I went back to look at my other blogs that I started eons ago, I don't think I'd recognise myself. To be honest, the fundamental reason why I blog is because I want to practice writing. This blog was started originally as a repository of my scribbles in my notebooks, and that's why the earlier entries are not in chronological order. Sometimes the entries don't make sense, even if they appear to be about something/someone, but they're really just writing exercises. So I'll keep reading, and writing, and write with a dictionary and thesaurus nearby, because sometimes the words I need I don't know yet, and sometimes a new word that I learn remains with me the rest of my life. 

Like the word 'interpellation' that I came across a few days ago:

interpellation †pleading, intercession XVI; †interruption XVII; (after F.) interruption of the order of the day in the French Chamber XIX. — L. interpellti, -n-, f. interpellre interrupt by speaking, f. INTER- + -pellre thrust or direct oneself.

It has its roots in the French language, and it's such a beautiful word. Just listen to the very sound of it - 'interpellation' - the light tinkering opening, the symmetrical assonance, the brief loll of the tongue against the amber ceiling of one's mouth, before that inevitable, yet o so gentle, shush at the end. Such elegant finality. Such a capital word of Parisian lyric. Sometimes in our rush to say our say or write our sentences, we forget that words are beautiful in themselves, that words are sounds, and sounds come in a kaleidoscope of tones, music, and song. Strung together by rhythm, nuances, and cadence, it becomes a piece of art. Sometimes in our rush to make words mean something, we demean the very purpose of words. Words are not just there to convey meaning, they're also roses of poetry.

So this year shall have me writing a lot more, writing for self-indulgence, writing for a purpose, and writing for the thesis. And generally indulging in the little happy things that make me happy. I hope you would too. We have only one life, and only so much time, and sometimes, the time to say goodbye is not for us to say. We can only be happy while we still can.

# Oslo

I have been a little remiss in not updating, been occupied with other frivolities while gallivanting in Norway with Xmas, the New Year, and snow on snow after snow. Back in England now, and back to ... the thesis. 

Hope you guys have had a wonderful holiday season, and that this year would be a marvelous one for all. On behalf of my closest and most loyal admirers, who are of course Faye Wong and Jeanette Winterson, I wish you all a Happy New Year :) 

# Manchester

Birthplace of Winterson. It drizzled throughout my two days there, all wet and all grey. As I turned around to take in the main street that was remaining behind, I thought it looked just like the picture on J.M. Coetzee's novel, Youth, except that the picture was of Nelson's Column in London, and here I was, in Manchester. Must be the English air.

__

Good news from the conference; the paper will be revised into two separate book publications, one of which I would be editor.

Good news from the thesis; it is shaping up very well, like never before, and I can now imagine a thesis at the end. That is not to say this is going to be easy, or that I will overcome my chronic whiling away of my time doing everything but the thesis.

Good news from me; well, I'm still on my supposed holiday. :)

Merry Christmas to one and all ~

Two letters and a long wank

Reading the Straits Times can be fun when you don’t take it too seriously. In fact, it’s a useful guide for teenagers to learn how their EL Paper One complaint letters should (or should not) be written, or for GP students to practice their logical reasoning skills (the exercises aren’t difficult). But read it too seriously and think it’s some moral guardian or gospel of truth and you risk turning into a mirror image of that newspaper i.e. obedient, craven, mediocre and infantile. 

Maybe these images have indeed been proliferating for a while, and the tiny island has turned into one huge reading room of serious Straits Times readers. 

But what exactly is so ghastly about it all? Try picking out any ST forum letter and unpick it, go through it with a red pen or something, e.g. and the two letters deserve to FAIL: 

ST Forum | Dec 11, 2008

Here are 3 worthy names

I REFER to Mr Tan Ee Kuan's response last Saturday ('We don't need new national 'narrative'') to Professor Kishore Mahbubani's article, 'Get to know Singapore's stars' (Dec 3).

Without wishing to get involved in the debate between the two [But why??? Or, why this… gambit?], I would disagree with Mr Tan's dismissive [Unnecessary value charge.] assertion that 'no Singaporean has approached the acclamation and international stature' of former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan.

In the mid-1980s, Professor Tommy Koh's name was making the diplomatic rounds as possible UN chief, but he refused to put himself forward when it became known that Mr Boutros Boutros-Ghali was going to seek re-election. In fact, Mr Boutros Boutros-Ghali specifically requested Prof Koh not to contest. [Mr Annan’s exalted stature was achieved after he completed his helm at the UN. Prof Koh might be a deserving candidate and might even have been an outstanding UN chief, but the fact that he has not been one invalidates the comparison. And to assert that eminence is earned just because Prof Koh’s name proffered but was told not to run seems to me duplicitous.]

A decade later, when Mr Annan was stepping down, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong's name was put forward. Despite appeals from many quarters, SM Goh decided not to enter the fray. [Invalid comparison, for reasons stated above. Further, each time the UN needs a new chief, numerous names are put forward, and many rejected. SM Goh might just as well have been rejected, no one would know.]

Singaporeans have made their country proud in their capacities at the UN. Ambassador Koh piloted two significant pieces of international legislation: the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1994), and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992). Currently, Dr Noeleen Heyzer, Undersecretary-General of the UN and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, is making a name for herself and Singapore. [The invalid comparison continues. No one doubts that there are/have been capable Singaporeans at the UN – the fair basis of comparison is to hold up a Singaporean UN chief against other UN chiefs. But the UN chief comparison is only a gambit. The point is whether Prof Koh’s or SM Goh’s or other ‘capable Singaporeans’’ fine achievements are/have been deemed to be of ‘international distinction and acclaim’. Thus, Mr Tan’s initial argument remains unrefuted. It’s also worth reiterating the point Mr Tan was making – that it is no big deal that Singapore has yet a Nobel Laureate or UN chief or such like; if there are deserving names, they shall be duly recognized. But it is another thing to recommend large-scale PR campaigns to embellish that fact.] 

K. Kesavapany 


Director 


Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Or, 

ST Forum | Dec 11, 2008

Mumbai carnage: We must not allow harmony to be shattered by terror

I REFER to Monday's letter by Central Singapore District mayor Zainudin Nordin, 'Mumbai carnage: We must not allow harmony to be shattered by terror', and the report, 'Past terrorist attacks in Singapore'.

Mr Zainudin's comment that 'there will always be those who try to undermine our harmony, with persuasive arguments, purportedly based on religious teachings', and the recollection of past terrorist incidents invoked in me a sense of both security and foreboding. [Why the kneejerk response, unquestioning acceptance of an official’s remark, and the undertone of a guru invoking gloom and impending danger? It's unbecoming of a mature and thinking citizen, especially one from a first-world country like Singapore. The ‘sense of both security and foreboding’ is also a state of mind that is inherently contradictory – one negates the other.]

Security because in the past four decades since 1965, our tiny red dot has evolved from Third World to First despite the terrorist incidents mentioned [Enacts straw man argument and arrives at a logical fallacy – 1. How does a ‘tiny red dot going from third world to first’ provide ‘security’ (it doesn’t)? 2. Terrorist incidents and economic prosperity can go together, as Ireland, Great Britain, South Korea, and Israel have demonstrated. The repeat broadcast of national slogans and fantasmatical rhetoric are also redundant; I find it amazing that Singaporeans 1. never tire of repeating them, and 2 don’t realize the extent of their brainwashing.]

Security because the government machinery is continually fine-tuned to ensure progress, prosperity and stability. [This statement expresses utter naivete and is severely lacking in irony. Governments can create effective policies and favourable conditions for prosperity; they are unable to ‘ensure’ prosperity. Governments, however, especially with their ‘machinery’, can ensure progress and stability by keeping a sophisticated secret police, bankrupting opposition members, engineering an unthinking and docile population, turning the Straits Times into a PAP newsletter, and occasionally waving the Internal Security Act in the afternoon breeze.] For instance, the introduction of Total Defence in 1984, to get Singaporeans to take personal responsibility for, and be involved in, the defence of the motherland, [There’s a difference between 'motherland' and 'fatherland'. The former commonly refers to communist or more socialist-oriented countries, and the latter is reserved for those fascist nations that Hitler and Mussolini fantasized about. Singapore happens to be a country that would’ve made Hitler rather proud.] was a wise decision. [1. Why is this a wise decision? 2. How is this a wise decision? For all the fantasies about Total Defence since 1984, it has thus far remained, like notions of 'racial harmony', 'majulah Singapura', 'regardless of race, language, or religion', empty rhetoric and mere fantasy. We’re no more ‘totally defended’ than any other country that has yet to be tested in a real war. Consequently, we’re no more ‘totally’ defended other than that we keep telling ourselves that we are and we must, but without actually knowing why and what it means.] It was put to the test during the Sars outbreak, and we did well. [Total Defence was hardly activated during the Sars period, any more than putting our borders and hospitals on high alert, adopting repressive measures akin to imprisonment, downplaying the gaffe of calling unfortunate victims ‘superinfectors’, and finally imprinting the entire episode onto the national consciousness via the mass media, national education, and national day celebrations, as yet another one of Singapore’s glorious triumphs against The Insurmountable No-One-Has-Done-It But-Us-Odds. With the able leadership of our A-team of PAP cadres, of course. If anything, the economic downturn and empty shops during the Sars period highlight the failure of Total Defence, one of its objectives was to ensure economic activity continues amidst conflict. If all these are 'Total Defence', then anything can be 'Total Defence'. Very postmodern.]

The recent move to pool the resources of the five community development councils and five self-help groups under a new organisation called OnePeople.sg, under the chairmanship of Mr Zainudin, is a move in the right direction. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: 'OnePeople.sg will reflect the ongoing mission to bring Singaporeans together as one people, regardless of race, language or religion.' [How and why is this a right move??? What has Mr Zainudin as chairman got to do with the argument? Why the uncritical acceptance of PM Lee’s statement just because he says so? How in the world does a 'reflection' of an objective contribute to that objective?!? May I recommend that to truly forge a nation that’s ‘regardless of race, language or religion’, Singaporeans have to go beyond bland sloganeering and actually begin to understand one another’s cultures, beliefs, and religion. The first step is to actually talk about these issues openly and freely. The next step is to stop using racial and religious harmony as an excuse for imposing control and censorship. The more one looks at it, the more Singapore's racial and religious policies serve precisely to stultify, to separate and to segregate.]

Why a sense of unease then? [Is there one in the first place? If there is, whose is it?]

Time and again, we read about political or racial upheavals in neighbouring countries and worry about when such incidents will erupt on our doorstep. [Of course you need to be reminded that all these democracy and liberty things are not good for you. Just don’t ask why it’s always Thailand and the Philippines and not other First World nations like France, Britain, the US, Canada etc and etc that can protest and prosper. Thus, constant harping about such neighbouring plights in your daily newspapers will ensure precisely that such incidents will not erupt on our doorstep!]

Another concern is the presence of selfish or fanatical Singaporeans who will not hesitate to pursue their personal agenda at the expense of racial and religious harmony. [Why is this a separate concern - it's exactly the same concern as your earlier concerns! This unnecessary and constant fear-mongering will only create the very same concerns that prompted your letter!]

What can we do to ensure that our hard-earned peace and harmony are not shattered by undesirable elements? [Why do you assume that Singapore's ‘peace and harmony’ is hard-earned? What exactly have Singaporeans done? But I can recommend some things that Singaporeans can do: 1. Cease support for Bush’s dodgy ‘war on terror’, nevermind that Singapore’d be left out of lucrative oil contracts in the Middle East, Singapore will also be left out of being one of Al-Qaeda's prime targets. 2. Lobby the US against exacerbating tensions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is the contemporary root of ‘Islamic terrorism’. While we're at it, try not to shoot our mouths off criticizing our neighbours ever so often that'd only further encourage ‘undesirable elements’.]

Every Singaporean must play his part by being ever vigilant and learning what Total Defence is all about. We must never be lulled into complacency. The Mas Selamat Kastari incident is a case in point [Logical fallacies – 1. Total Defence and vigilance are not the only things that Singaporeans must or can do, especially if Singaporeans don’t know what they mean or entail, and especially if none of the underlying problems would be resolved. 2. Refer to recommendations above. 3. Singaporeans are hardly complacent – they’re perpetually reminded that they’re not good enough, not bright enough, not employable enough, not grateful enough, and that it’s always all their fault. This is inevitably accompanied by constant rebukes and hectoring by the A-team ministers, and followed up by increasing the CPF withdrawal age limit, decreasing Union support, increasing the number of foreign talents, increasing courtesy/language campaigns, increasing GST, conservancy and utilities and transport rates, all at the same time… 4. It wasn’t complacent Singaporeans that led to Mr Mas Selamat’s escape – no one really knows who’s to blame, or what exact crime he committed – but Singaporeans do know he escaped from a detention centre. 'But how???' is in the minds of every Singaporean, who incidentally, spent weeks combing through the sprawling island for the missing man].

The media can provide more coverage on Total Defence and open up more opportunities for discussion. We must not forget that our state of well-being and harmony did not come by chance, but through years of able leadership, and the hard work and resilience of Singaporeans from all walks of life. [Any more coverage and discussion and Total Defence will become Total Indoctrination.]

Mr W. G.

[Mr W.G.'s letter can be summed up into two contradictions and one irrelevance - 

1. If harmony truly exists in Singapore, no act of terrorism will be able to destroy it. The word 'truly' being operative. In fact, it might even serve to rally a people and unite the country (This is of course not a wish for terrorismt incidents to take place in Singapore, or to happen to Singaporeans). 

2. If the Singaporean government is as capable as Mr W.G. makes it out to be, all of his concerns would have automatically been made redundant, along with the list of poor reasoning, logical fallacies, dodgy examples, half-baked ideas, and gratuitous reiteration of propaganda. The point I am making is that no government is perfect, incorruptible, or infallible - the more a government tells you it is, the more disbelieving you must be. 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' (Who guards the guardians?) is the question; and only true citizens have the answer.

3. Finally, Mumbai's terrorist attack is a result of the longstanding political and military tensions between India and Pakistan. It has nothing to do with fostering or destroying racial and religious harmony in Singapore.]

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Cherian George pointed out in a recent essay that this state of affairs will persist because it is profitable; because essentially, media bosses (headed by former ministers and civil servants) and editors and journalists (seconded from our spy agencies) are more interested in profits and salaries than in news freedom. Or freedom for that matter – since corporations desire the monopoly of markets just as power craves for the control of society. That is why Singapore is such a happy family… it’s such sunny news everyday. 

But if the media abdicates (or is compelled to) its fiduciary duty of being the fourth estate, and becomes merely a propaganda platform for the government, the majority of the citizens, being either indoctrinated or inured to such an extent, naturally become, or choose to become, an inarticulate and unthinking mass. It is this point that I fault Cherian on two counts, one academic and one intellectual. First, profits and advocacy are not mutually exclusive - there are numerous examples of independent media that are profit-seeking and profitable and that fulfill their public duty. That none of them is found in Singapore is indicative of the real problem - i.e. the assertive web of legislation and the complicity of mercenary newspeople that lead to this current abysmal situation. Second, his conclusion is intellectually untenable. Pecuniary interests should never be a justification for authoritarian control, much less when the object in question is a medium of and for public conscience (and consciousness), much less for the ghastly picture of Singaporean society that has been wrought. Cherian’s logical extension would be to critique this state of affairs; it may be unfair to ask this of him, for to do so would be to risk becoming a mendicant professor, subsequently invoking the triumph of the will. But this is in itself an acknowledgment of the government’s totalitarian impulse, which, again, returns one to an intellectual/moral objection to it. 

dreams

For the past two or three weeks I've been having a lot of dreams in my sleep. S attributes it to the quietness of this village town. And quite right too, for the house is situated off the main road, and there's hardly any traffic or noise. It's also been a time of solitude. Days would pass without my knowing, without my stepping out of the house, and without my seeing another human being. Every morning after breakfast I'd read or write through the day. And soon it'd be time for dinner, which would be a quiet but nice enough do, a steak or a roast meat and potatoes, sometimes pasta, and usually with a bottle of wine, and coffee and chocolates afterwards. Then I'd sink into the couch to watch a DVD, and then I'd go to bed. When I finally switch off the lights after a bit of bedside reading, it's complete silence, complete darkness, and soon I'd be deep in sleep.

There's something about this present that keeps taking me back to a particular time when I was still in Singapore. During that period, my day would begin at 5 in the morning, and after a thorough day of teaching, I would, once or twice a week, arrive at S's house just in time to do dinner, the day's sweat and grime and satisfaction still sticking onto my shirt. Dinner'd be exactly the same stuff, a steak or a roast meat and potatoes, sometimes pasta, and usually with a bottle of wine too, and coffee and chocolates afterwards. Except there wouldn't be time for a DVD, for I'd be quite drunk and utterly exhausted by then, and many times I fell asleep on S's couch while the coffee was being made. Then, I'd wake up just in time to catch the last bus back, and get some sleep for the next day of school.

Those were happy times, one of my happiest, though it contained one of my saddest too, and that's why it was such a shuddering experience a few evenings ago when I put on a certain Vivaldi, one I kept playing during those times, and every hour came rushing back. And it's this past two weeks' combination of hermitude and deja vu that I began to miss teaching, and to wonder if I would've been happier staying on to teach and making it my lifelong vocation, instead of packing all up and leaving. And it's probably all these peacefulness and solitude and reminiscing - very conducive to tender emotional states - that brought the dreams. They came with all the weird scenes that dreams come with, but in those scenes would turn up my family, my best friends, teaching, and students, each taking a turn, like a revolving tableau vivant.

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# Lincolnshire

Walking on these cobblestones, I would sometimes stop for a while and imagine what this town was like when the Romans came in AD45 and laid the first stones of the castle and the cathedral. A thousand years later, this town apparently became one of the wealthiest in England. And another nine hundred years later - that is, last night, I had a medieval glimpse of its bustle whilst on a stroll through the annual christmas market, with unusually cheery townsfolk in traditional costume peddling their traditional crafts, wares, and foods. And the old cathedral was all lit up, entirely golden and magnificent. 

One of my favourite writers had written about this 'great church brooding over the town', he who had lived not far away; paragraphs and paragraphs of brilliant images, luminous prose, words lighting fires. . . 

*

Away from time, always outside of time! Between east and west, between dawn and sunset, the church lay like a seed in silence, dark before germination, silenced after death. Containing birth and death, potential with all the noise and transition of life, the cathedral remained hushed, a great, involved seed, whereof the flower would be radiant life inconceivable, but whose beginning and whose end were the circle of silence. Spanned round with the rainbow, the jewelled gloom folded music upon silence, light upon darkness, fecundity upon death, as a seed folds leaf upon leaf and silence upon the root and the flower, hushing up the secret of all between its parts, the death out of which it fell, the life into which it has dropped, the immortality it involves, and the death it will embrace again.

Here in the church, "before" and "after" were folded together, all was contained in oneness. Brangwen came to his consummation. Out of the doors of the womb he had come, putting aside the wings of the womb, and proceeding into the light. Through daylight and day-after-day he had come, knowledge after knowledge, and experience after experience, remembering the darkness of the womb, having prescience of the darkness after death. Then between-while he had pushed open the doors of the cathedral, and entered the twilight of both darkness, the hush of the two-fold silence where dawn was sunset, and the beginning and the end were one.

Here the stone leapt up from the plain of earth, leapt up in a manifold, clustered desire each time, up, away from the horizontal earth, through twilight and dusk and the whole range of desire, through the swerving, the declination, ah, to the ecstasy, the touch, to the meeting and the consummation, the meeting, the clasp, the close embrace, the neutrality, the perfect, swooning consummation, the timeless ecstasy. There his soul remained, at the apex of the arch, clinched in the timeless ecstasy, consummated.

And there was no time nor life nor death, but only this, this timeless consummation, where the thrust from earth met the thrust from earth and the arch was locked on the keystone of ecstasy. This was all, this was everything. Till he came to himself in the world below. Then again he gathered himself together, in transit, every jet of him strained and leaped, leaped clear into the darkness above, to the fecundity and the unique mystery, to the touch, the clasp, the consummation, the climax of eternity, the apex of the arch.

-- D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow

This side of paradise

November. Sunday. Salzburg. I enter the final year of my twenties. Evening, and I find myself wandering alone into a cathedral, where shortly, a Mass commences, and Mozart’s Requiem exults from above in full choral glory. 

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That day became an image that intermittently appeared in my mind, usually during my quiet moments. A few nights ago, out of no particular boredom I took out my notebook and scribbled down the dates, Nov. 1999 – Nov. 2009. My twenties. 

What was I like when I was twenty, what hopes had I held on to then, I wondered. How did those years disappear, one by one, from one into another, and into yet another, and the images came like trailers of a film. 

I divided the pages into years, and in rough chronological order scribbled down some of my lesser milestones and more significant days. When I finished I was rather struck. Some events and names stood out more than the others, like stars in the night sky, where if you concentrate long and hard enough, the stars will begin to take shape. Some people interpret their starsigns this way. 

How would I have foreseen those random acts and casual decisions leading me to that particular corner, to befriending this initial stranger, and then turning me into this unrecognisable person? The transformations have been variegated, intellectual, aesthetic, literary, political, unimaginable. Erase a phrase or a word from those pages, as if they hadn’t occurred – took two years to forget B (2000), or, Operation, entirely weak and voiceless (2002), or, off to Melbourne (2003), or, read Winterson (2005), or, X. (2006) – and a piece would be missing, and I wouldn’t be complete, I wouldn’t be me even, standing on this ground.

How would I ever be able to make sense of all this, other than to hold onto this firmament of a decade in helpless awe and amazement? 

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I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise