Weird Starts

A slightly strange start to the day - listening to Chávez's Copenhagen speech, enjoying my wonderful housemate's tale of her very strange dream which involved me and an unwanted party in our house, and a sudden recollection of this incident in Singapore in 2004.

I remember it made for wonderful tabloid fodder - managed to find a report of this 'investigation' conducted by TNP on Ondine's blog- and it made mrbrown's SNE column as well.

And to end it all, being 'followed' on twitter by a person who calls himself a 'conservatrucker':

I am a God-fearing conservative truck driver. I read the Bible daily. I listen to mostly conservative talk radio while I 18-wheel around the state of Michigan. This blog will consist of my opinions and perspective concerning the political landscape in America, among other things.

He tweets:

If my life ever comes to a point that I have to accept any type of gov't assistance, that is when I'll consider myself a failure.
4:53 AM Apr 24th via UberTwitter

Ah... here's a toast to the health of you and your loved ones, and the excellent insurance coverage you guys must enjoy!

Not for a long, long, long while.

EMAIL FROM DAD TO MOM WITH ME ON CC

Called Sis to congratulate her on the arrival of Choon's baby. She sounded so happy and excited.She forgot I am in Taiwn. She will be a good grandmother. JUST WONDER WHEN YOUR TURN will come.

Forgotten Things

Because I have a memory of a goldfish, trawling through old emails can be a rather nostalgic experience.

I had completely forgotten about acting for Joce's Serum City as a propaganda host, forgotten about a trip to Tioman with some friends, forgotten that I signed off an email to Mal with "don't fire me", forgotten what an self-righteous idiot I was/am, forgotten about the photos I took with a green lizard next to my face, forgotten about that an email with the words: "Hi! I have attached the pictures of the girls. Hope you like them." Ahhh....

It makes me very happy to have two hours in the morning to 'warm up' before the day begins - filled with a routine of mindless internet surfing, elaborate breakfasts, multiple cups of coffee, careless browsing of newspapers.

And then the day starts and I sometimes wonder to myself is it really so bad to wish that the morning would last forever?

GENERIC ASTROLOGY READINGS WHICH ARE
SPECIFICALLY APPLICABLE TO MY LIFE

• There are indications of mistakes in life arising from your impulsiveness, which is heightened and readily expressed by your emotional nature.
• In love you are sympathetic and intense and try to conduct your romance according to your idealistic conception of love.
• Your well-developed imagination often leads you into the realm of *mysticism, and there are *religious tendencies in your nature. (*Applicable only if you substitute 'mysticism' with 'idiocy' and 'religious' with 'alcoholic'.)
• Once you have made up your mind, you are closed to all other suggestion or opinion.
• Pluto opposition the Ascendant shows that you attract people with powerful egos and strong temperaments. (Cause...)
  
• This indicates that the key to more spiritual and material development lies in your response to the several tests destined for you which consist of patiently enduring difficulties through human relationships. (... and Effect.)
  
• Your inner self seems attracted to unusual matters related to the termination of life-death and its mysteries.
• You will begin to realize the significance of friends and how important they are to you.
• It may be necessary to struggle and break free from circumstances that you encounter in your work or with authorities, such as employers or government agencies.
• At any rate some obstacle is preventing you from doing what you have to do, and you want to rebel against it.

NOT-SO-NICE THINGS I'VE SAID TODAY

I think you guys can get back to work. Adda [chat] time is over.

Erm... I think its a lot more complicated than that.

I don't care.

What you've done is unacceptable.


I'm going to need a better excuse than that

"Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good."- Phillip Pullman

Goosebumps. Read from here, thanks to this first link from Tym!

The heat is taking a toll on things. I count one case of a severe stomach virus thingamajig, four cases of semi-serious diarrhoea and general nausea, one case of high fever and one case of high-blood pressure that was a skip away from a heart stroke.

All this within the last week - general productivity is down because everyone feels like CRAP (and you can't go online in the house when there isn't electricity), the erratic electric supply is wrecking havoc on generators and computers, and just getting through the day uses up all the energy you have.

I never thought of things in terms of energy levels and good/bad vibes etc -- but I've been doing so recently, and it seems to make sense. It's just becoming really difficult to recharge, although a basketful of kittens might just do the trick for me.

I just feel worried, that the worst has yet to come.

LINK

Heat

The days are growing unbearable as the suffocating heat of summer descends upon us. Power cuts are now for two hours at a stretch, several times a day - so sometimes I'm only able to go online for an hour or two when I'm back in the house. I'm already pretty lucky that my area doesn't seem to suffer from a shortage of water (yet), unlike many other areas of Dhaka where you see queues of women and children collecting water.

I said to a friend last night, how I don't understand how anyone can be sure about anything anymore. And yet, I find great comfort in constant sensation of 'not knowing'. If anything, this certainty of doubt gives me great consolation. And strangely enough, given all that has happened over the last few months, I was pleasantly surprised to find out - after being forced to dig deep into my head - that I am still unchangeably hopelessly and inexplicably optimistic.

And in my head, I find myself constantly thinking about what Delahaye said:

... he maintains that "photojournalism is neither photography or journalism. It has it's function but it's not where I see myself: the press is for me just a means for photographing, for material, not for telling the truth. In magazines, the images are vulgar, reality is reduced to a symbolic or simplistic function. . . one of the reasons for the photographs' large size is to make them incompatible with the economy of the press." - Link

In other words, what inspired the picture-takers, the newspapers, the magazines and television the most was not the civil war or the planned massacres of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, but the humanitariam melodrama, ‘the endless lines of refugees, the sacks of rice, the orphans and field hospitals, the images of downtrodden humanity and resolute volunteers, of suffering and salvation’.


- The media and the Rwanda genocide. Allan Thompson. 2007.

The dead bird in an open cage is a visual that I've always had in my head - and I hope to be able to develop this and take it further some day.

- The Dead Bird. Margaret Wise Brown and Remy Charlip. 1958.

These remarks have been forced from us by a keen sense of the wrongs and injuries to which our feathered friends are constantly subjected, arising from an observation of the vast amount of unnecessary suffering entailed upon them by carelessness more than heartlessness. "We are persuaded that many of the tears which have been shed over dead birds, have proceeded as much from contrition for neglect, as from sorrow for the loss sustained; and our fair readers will, we trust, pardon us if we remind them in the words of Thomas Hood, that,

"Evil is wrought by want of thought, As much as by want of heart."

The cage should never, in winter, be left in a room without fire.

- Chapter II, Bird Cages. Canary Birds Manual. William Wood. 1869.

- Waking. John Everett Millais. 1865.

Theme of the week.

"ll est beau comme la rétractilité des serres des oiseaux rapaces ; ou encore, comme l’incertitude des mouvements musculaires dans les plaies des parties molles de la région cervicale postérieure ; ou plutôt, comme ce piège à rats perpétuel, toujours retendu par l’animal pris, qui peut prendre seul des rongeurs indéfiniment, et fonctionner même caché sous la paille ; et surtout, comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection d’une machine à coudre et d’un parapluie ! "

- Les Chants de Maldoror. Comte de Lautréamont. 1869.

Oh how clever.

A few years ago I had this great fantastic wonderful idea of printing my own t-shirts so that I could wear a new one every day. How else would I be able to share my thoughts and feelings with general society?

Well that is not going to happen, although I still yearn for that purple shirt with these words in shiny gold: "Your Disco Needs You."

Am enjoying the rants of MOG (Miserable Old Git) thanks to a link from Christine. His comments of this year's WPP makes me feel all kinds of good. There had already been discussion here about the strange lack of captions, and the changing visual taste of WPP juries, but I think what we really needed was a good rant like this.

I was rather undecided about the winning picture, but MOG helped me make up my mind:

...isn’t it reasonable to assume that the appropriate place to see the image that goes on to win the world’s most prestigious photojournalism competition is actually on the front pages of the world’s press? The problem is, this perfectly successful picture would just not read on an average newspaper front page; it would need a Guardian-type centre spread or magazine double page display to do it justice. Or is it really meant to be a framed print on a gallery wall? I rather think that those who guide the destiny of WPPh would not be unhappy if this were to happen.

Of course, thousands of people go to see the WPPh exhibitions all over the world but this is not press coverage in any real sense but rather photojournalism extracted from its natural context and put on the wall. There’s a danger that we will end up with a pointless parade of photojournalists as visual peacocks, displaying their beautiful feathers to each other in a secret garden.

I've met a few peacocks here and there. They are the ones who introduce their work by first listing all the awards and accolades it received. The story and the purpose takes second place. This itself is not a problem - it becomes irritating when you claim to have done the story because you want to 'help' or 'raise awareness' or 'make visible the invisible'.

And I couldn't help but laugh when I read about the CREEP:

Exhausted by his internet experience, MOG is now inviting readers of this blog to join him in a campaign for the eradication of repetitive photojournalism (CREEP). The mission statement is to encourage contemporary photojournalists to pledge to avoid predictable visual situations. Among suggested subjects generally embargoed might be:

• Women in black weeping over their dead menfolk.
• Terrified civilians running away from trouble in a crouching position.
• Posed groups of defiant rebels waving Kalashnikovs or rocket launchers, giving the victory sign.
• Soldiers on the frontline, arms at the ready, looking meaningfully at the enemy.
• Soldiers leaping out of helicopters, primed for action.
• Anyone taking, smoking or injecting drugs.
• Hell’s Angels posing with macho motorbikes.
• Frenzied music audiences screaming at rock bands.
• Skate boarders silhouetted against a brooding sky.

* Update: Have now read Matthias Bruggmann's passionate response to the article in the comments section and I'm all confused.

Morning Moments

The Makings of a Good Day

• A man with carrying a solitary fish in a plastic bag.
• A public wall painted with the words of Henry Miller: "I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive." Touché.
• Silly motorcyclists carrying their helmets instead of putting it on.
• A man with purple pants and red socks.
  
• My CNG driver alerting me to a road accident (look look look!!! tsk tsk tsk) because I was too distracted scribbling down these notes in my notebook.

Its been a month since I started my own Bollywood movie, and I'm still waiting for it to end. I've had two days of peace (hooray!) and lets hope I haven't jinxed it by talking about it.

A very nice couple from Hong Kong stopped by the office - a photographer and his wife does psychology work with NGOs. I thought it was rather nice/strange how they didn't automatically assume I was of the same race until they saw my namecard. Lim? You're Chinese?

Then I started apologising, the way I always do, for my poor Mandarin and non-existent Cantonese - but they assured me that they weren't that fluent in Mandarin either. It was nice, how we instinctively switched to speaking in Mandarin even though we seemed to communicate a lot more fluently in English.

I watched Wolfgang Haffner live in concert (with the Haffner-Trio) a couple of hours ago. I've never seen a drummer smile so much. After the week I've had, I think I really needed this.

Excerpts (Part II)

MY PARENTS WEIGH IN ON THE JACK NEO SITUATION

(*Note for non-Singaporean friends:
JN is a Singaporean film director whose affair with
a young girl was recently splashed all over the papers.)

(*Excerpts Part I)

Dad: Your mommy so lucky I'm not rich and famous.

Mom: Oh please, only the cats want you.

Dad: But then you, as a man with FOUR kids - your son is already 19 years old!!! - you blardy hell still go and take advantage of young girl! Damn blardy buaya lah.

Dad: (to Mom) Why you never say anything bad about Jack Neo.

Mom: Aiyah I don't pity the girls man. Come on. You know he is married with children - what you expect? In the first place, they are also in the wrong.

Dad: If the girl was smart enough, she should have taken him to the point of fucking blackmail man. "Try anything funny, I will expose you!" Now, expose already, how to get anything out of him. At least get some money out of it lah.

Mom: For heaven's sake, go and blackmail the Dubai king's son lah. Of all people go and blackmail Jack Neo? I don't even think he is that rich. Aiyah stupid lah. Make a fool of themselves.

Me: Why is Pa siding with the girls?

Mom: Aiyah Pa is always like that. But to me, they are stupid. They are not so gullible. Nowadays, 18 or 19-year-old girls... wah you hold my hand and tell me I'll be Fann Wong number two? Who is so stupid to believe that man? You think what? Writing a book ah? Even Ah Lian also not so stupid.

Mom: Ok lah, at least ST reporter got story to write now, otherwise they have no job. (Laughs)

Mom: Ya, America had their Tiger, but Singapore is Lion City, so we got Lion here. Want to see next week how many more girls pop out?

Dad: You know what is his next movie? One Hole No Enough.

I personally don't care about this at all, but I brought up the topic intentionally because I knew the soundbites would be hilarious.

So, ahem, maybe this is what equality means: that my 54-year-old mother thinks the mistress is 'shameless' and 'stupid', and my 56-year-old father thinks the married man is a lying sonabitch.

Apologies for crude and harsh language - runs in the family.

Women's Day

I've been enjoying Dorothy Surrenders for some time now - mainly because I love the writing, because I love fawning over the same women they fawn over, and because reading that blog makes me feel like I'm talking to a friend who gets me. Plus, where else am I going to get my fix of androgyny?

And thus, in tribute to International Women's Day - I decided to read all Buffy-related posts on the blog, and intend to fall asleep to the sounds of Season 7. The logic may seem rather strained, but well, it makes sense to me.

I have two younger women working with me, aged 24 and 22, and I love them to bits. We rarely talk in the office, but a couple of days ago I had some time alone with them and asked them how they handled the "eve-teasing" (I really shouldn't use that word) situation here in Dhaka.

As a bideshi, I have the luxury of fighting back. Either by acknowledging remarks with a glare or a stare-down, or a good old-fashioned slap. As locals, their only option is to ignore the cat calls and lewd comments.

I found out that just days earlier, the younger one had been grabbed by four guys on motorbikes who blocked her as she was walking to work. She said they grabbed at her, and there was no one around. She was so scared, she did not know what to do. The guys left when some other pedestrians came by.

The other told me that the last time she tried to confront a guy who had said something rude to her, a crowd gathered and she ended up feeling embarrassed and ridiculed because the guy simply denied having said anything.

"If we say anything, we get in trouble." The two girls laughed it off and giggled while talking to me. It seemed they are so used to it that they regard it as just another instance of how ridiculous life can be.

And yet, when I told them about how a friend had smashed a phone (guy trying to show us porn videos on the street) and how I slapped someone -- their glee was unmistakable. They were overjoyed that we had done those things, and I wonder if they wished they could do it too.

Yesterday, I hinted/suggested/ordered the men in the department to GET US SOME CAKE - and they did. I wish I had planned something better than this.

I'll admit that I never really thought much of having a special day for women - in the same way I find Valentine's Day, Friendship Day, and all those other Days basically meaningless. But I suppose I only thought like that because I had the luxury of never needing to be reminded that I had rights, to be reminded that equality was still something we had to strive for, to be reminded that things have to change.

Today, as I sat in an office filled with laughter and the sounds of people enjoying free cake, and I listened to this speech by Joss Whedon, I realised its time for me to arrange for a Buffy marathon in my house.

I love his words so much I wanted to write it down. In his speech, Joss reenacts his replies to the question he is always asked during press junkets:

So, why do you write these strong women characters?

Why are you even asking me this? (This is like ) How is it possible that this is even a question? Honestly, seriously. Why did you write that down? Why aren't you asking a hundred other guys why they don't write strong women characters? I believe what I'm doing should not be remarked upon, or even honoured... But seriously, this question is ridiculous, and you've just got to stop.


So, why do you write these strong women characters?

Because. Equality is not a concept, it is not something we should be striving for. It is a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women. And the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition, it is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who is confronted with it.

We need equality. Kinda now.

So, why do you write these strong women characters?

Because you are still asking me that question.

Epic.

I don't know if this qualifies as a Fail or a Win, but this explains everything.

President, PM's pay near doubled

Dhaka, Mar 8 (bdnews24.com)

The cabinet on Monday approved a huge pay hike for the president, prime minister, ministers, chief justice and Supreme Court judges, of up to 83 percent.

The president's monthly salary will jump from Tk 33,400 to Tk 61,200. The prime minister's will rise from Tk 32,000 to Tk 58,600.

Once you get over the shock of a EIGHT-THREE PERCENT PAY RISE - you realise that a Bangladeshi construction worker in Singapore earns almost the same amount as his Prime Minister.

Of course, the S$640 the Prime Minister of Bangladesh used to earn does not include the other substantial financial perks she receives. I've seen her around - she's not doing too badly for herself.

But still. I can almost hear LKY saying, "See? Told ya."

The Daily Untruth Project

I've decided to tell one deliberate lie everyday to make everyone's lives all that more interesting.

There are pink bananas in South America.

After I told the lie, I realised that my friends with dirty-minded friends would have a lot to snigger about, but I work with really sweet folks who didn't take that route. I promise tomorrow's lie will not be fruit-related. Maybe something about unproven scientific theories. For instance, did you know that the whip is the first man made device capable of exceeding the sound barrier? I had no idea.

After I returned, I saw a pigeon in a cage, hanging in the balcony of the house across from the rooftop of my office. Birds in cages are generally depressing, and the size of this cage made this a particularly dismal example. Maybe they saved it from certain death and are nursing it back to health. Sometimes I try to go against my nature and refrain from negative judgement. But after seeing someone stomp on the neck of a German Shepherd last week, and that incident of the overweight monkey (did I ever tell you about the monkey that was so fat it couldn't move?) -- well, let's just say I've been given the impression that the concept of pet ownership is rather different here.

Still! Guess what. I spoke to the nice girl who lives in that house (rooftop conversations across buildings are always fun) and it turns out that I was right. That bird don't fly so good no more. Right on cue, the pigeon clumsily flew out of the living room onto the balcony, perching itself on a box and seeming rather content.

OK Go has a new video and it is pretty. This too shall pass? Sure, if you say so.

There's a funny thing that bideshis here say sometimes - that nothing in Bangladesh is real. Or maybe this is a statement I made up myself, and made myself believe that someone else uttered it so that I could repeat it guiltlessly.

Anyway, this is likely less to do with the country and more to do with the bideshis themselves. To have come so far to a place so unlike their home, that they end up having no point of reference when they leave. Sometimes, it feels like the things that happened here never took place at all.

I felt like this when I went back to Singapore. I tried bringing up Dhaka in conversations, to reintroduce that point of reference so I wouldn't feel so unanchored, so lost. It worked sometimes, especially with those who had felt similar sentiments at some point in their lives. More often than not, I felt like I was recounting a dream - an interesting conversation point with no real consequence.

A few days ago, I did something on impulse that has very real consequences. I broke someone's heart - and I say that in the least melodramatic way possible. But the truth is really that severe, and my actions will likely alter someone's life in a way that had never been contemplated or considered by either of us.

This is a lesson I learnt from the past - that I don't do anything if I don't act on impulse, if I don't follow my gut. Because with time, my brain thinks too much and I'm pretty good at talking myself out of just about any difficult decision I have to make.

So I suppose it was a good thing that I didn't stop to consider the consequences before I did what I did, and said what I said. If I had any inkling or suspicion about just how bad it could get, you can be damned sure that I would have no trouble easing myself off that platform.

What's done is done, and I can only hope that time will do its magic and help us make sense of everything again.

I'll tell ya this much kiddos, wearing dentures suck. I know I'll get used to it over time, but I guess this is one of those things, that I don't really want to get used to.

I also can't believe they are now going to form a committee to figure out what to do about all those accidents along Upper Thomson Road. A new overhead bridge? Or traffic lights? Or underpass? Choices, choices.

I also can't believe the amount of vehemence some of my friends show towards workers from China. I'd understand the anger if they had lost jobs or money because of these workers, but it seemed like they just dislike having them around. Dislike them serving them in hawker centers, dislike them showing up in their clinics, dislike them living next door to them in the HDB estate.

I read a bit of Alex Tan's blog to try and understand the angst about foreigners being in Singapore. However, his criticisms were directed towards the government's policies and how Singaporeans were directly affected by the influx of migrant workers. My friends are, for lack of a better word, xenophobic bastards.

To be fair, I know half of what they said don't mean anything - guys sometimes have a tendency say stupid things when they gather together and too much testosterone is in the air. Apparently they are rude and 'uncivilised' - but I would argue that there are plenty of Singaporeans who match that description as well.

No hope for the human race indeed. From Shadakalo blog (http://shadakalo.blogspot.com/2010/01/rapists-fatwas-and-lack-of-justice.html):

Daily Star is reporting that:

Eight months after being raped, a 16-year-old at Khargor of Kasba upazila in Brahmanbaria had to receive 101 lashes as "punishment".

A village arbitration found her guilty and issued the 101 lashes fatwa (religious edict) but amazingly left alleged rapist Enamul Mia, 20, untouched.

The arbitration also fined the victim's father Tk 1,000 and issued another fatwa that her family would be forced into isolation if he failed to pay up.

Village matbar (local leader) Delwar Hossain alias Ullashi executed the durra (lashes) on January 17.

I don't know what hell the rapist will burn in, but I am sure he will be joined there by Mr. Delwar Hossain, who was the judge, jury and executioner against this girl.

Madam Prime Minister and Madam Home Minister: you are women. You have also taken an oath to uphold the constitution of this country. Please, in the name of all that you hold holy and dear, wake up and defend this girl.

She has been raped and became pregnant. The news report mentions pregnancy upto 7 months and a subsequent abortion. Such late-term abortions are considered high-risk even in the USA.

But after all that, the rapist is walking around a free man because, according to the local matbors, "he belongs to another village" while this girl was beaten until she fainted. Her father was also fined Taka 1000, which presumably the matbors will spend on partying.

Full marks to Daily Star for refraining from posting the name and a picture of the victim. Have they finally realised that girls and women don't deserve to have their faces splashed across national newspapers when they have been raped/attacked with acid? Hooray for some decency!

I had a dream last night Cedar Rapids

This is very random, but I think a highlight of my life would be attending a live concert of NIN, Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga. I have goosebumps just thinking about it.

The theme of my week so far - being true to yourself.

Helping along with the theme is having Lady Gaga on repeat mode. God help me, I love that woman.