Dreams of Infinity

Altered State

2007-01-10T21:07:00.000+08:00

We've moved.

Need we say more?

Yes, actually. We are waiting for wordpress to come up with a fun importer. Then we shall be exonerate.

Update your links!

Visions

2007-01-04T20:47:00.000+08:00

Happy and belated New Year.

I have attempted the arcane business of blogging, but have never seemed to be able to publish anything of sufficient merit and impact these past few weeks. For this I am profoundly unapologetic, in full awareness that at times a blog, as fields of crops, requires an extensive period of lying fallow such that mysterious biological processes may reenergize the soil (by absorbing carcase of small insects, perhaps?) What I have just mentioned is probably nonsense. Blogs cannot lie fallow, or their owners will find that whatever sagging readership they have previously mantained will disappear like autumn leaves come the winter. But when one's ideas are similarly fallow, or if the tender of the crop is otherwise engaged in activities of another nature, then it is inevitable that such things must occur. Therefore I shall acquiscese to the odes of sloth.

Now, come the New Year, I find that once again I have the compulsion to blog. I am unable to imagine why. Several times I have contemplated moving to Wordpress; subject to the apathy of the co-blogger Nova, whom I approached concerning this rather pressing issue, who replied with a random syllable or nine. Doubtless Blogger's all pervasive AI censorship will quail at the mere mention of disloyalty; well, I say to thee, Blogger, if thou wishest to mantain thy devoted slaves, thou wouldst do better to improve thy blog templates.

The question of Blogs comes once again to the forefront of introspection. Why do we blog? Why don't we? Are blogs what they seem, exegeses of expositulary intent, ego-trips, or hopeful attempts to garner notoriety? And why do some blogs lie fallow, why does compulsion, that serpentine monster of caprice, rear and strike at the strangest moments? For you must have known times where you, perhaps, sunk in capitulation to some drudgery or another, are seized with a brilliant snippet of insight that you cannot bear to keep to yourself, but when you finally sit at your computers, fingers poised to deliver your grand expositions, you falter and say, "Mayhap, I, myself, art not of the Temper for the commission of my Thought upon the flimsy paper of the Web." For, myself I must admit that such has happened oftentime, and is partially responsible for the Fallowness of this Blog.

The Fallowness shall probably be a fixture of this Blog for a long time. Perhaps, as the paradox of leisure goes, I shall be compelled to blog more, but somehow I doubt this. But you can never tell when the Blog-muse falls on your shoulders and you have no choice, as the automaton hath, but to sit at your computer and type. I yearn for the days that I could post twice a day. Those days rest, but perhaps I can live them once more, someday. For indeed they are synonymous with the nostalgia-coloured lens of hindsight, that one never fully appreciates the present, but when it is the past. Truly, is nostalgia biased, or are we? Also, was that comment a product of bias? When we perceive the present, do we see with present-tinted cynicism?

In other news I have been reading the Book of the New Sun. It is said to be dense in several ways. It leaves you with an almost indescribable feeling of awe at the sheer imaginative scope and alieness of Severian's society; and yet a feeling of frustration at the inscrutability of the narrative. But then I have not finished, thus comments are reserved for when I do, in the not-so-distant future. I wish, however, that the science fiction tones and settings were more pronounced; versimilitude of the barbarity of this future only goes so far; suspension of disbelief, the fourth wall we keep banging our bodies against when reading a book, is sufficient if spice may be had for the sacrifice of such.

***

Japan

2006-12-09T19:47:00.000+08:00

is a very interesting place. I’ve been here for about five days, and am currently at Narita eating at the same café where collinear and I rushed to fill out our OM style and prop forms, which we were actually supposed to do a week before. Their menu has changed somewhat though; instead of beef stew and pizza like the last time, I’m currently having curry and naan. Which reminds me of our OM Karan jokes: Together we can make beautiful chapatti! Ask any omer for details.

Anyhow: quite frankly, I’ve always disliked the whole Wapanese, or pseudo-Japanese, culture that seems to have sprung out everywhere with a tv and access to Naruto. Seriously, nothing boils the blood quite like a bevy of 16 year old pimpled white teens/ah lians with yellow hair and ultra high boots doing a “Kawaiii neee!, or having a conversation with someone who adds the suffix “-San” to the end of your name about twenty times in a row in order to sound like a four year old Japanese boy. Thankfully, the real thing is far, far better.

I started the trip at Club Med Sapporo.
First, lets start with a quick check: do YOU know where Club Med Sapporo is?

Well yes, aside from being in Sapporo.

No?

Good, thought so.

Unfortunately though, for some unfathomable reason, even though it takes a 7 hour plane ride, two 2 hour train rides and THEN a 30 minute bus ride to get there, the place was SWARMING with Singaporeans. Not just any Singaporeans too; Acsians. They even outnumbered the Japanese! As a result, almost every conversation in the next three days began with “HEY YOU! Class of 7_ right?! Do you know [string of entirely random names]? My son’s from ACS too, is yours?” and so on. I can almost see US doing it thirty years down the road…the Class of 08, hah. Doesn’t quite sound the same.

The huge AC crowd did have its benefits though. I met a few people from our school, most notably Josh (not Hoe, the Indian one) from sec 3 GEP and OM. We spent many memorable moments falling down spectacularly from the steepest hills we could get our hands (or rather, feet) on, accosting the hill with our skiis and snowboards. Unfortunately, because the ski lifts weren’t open yet, we had to pound our own ski slope by packing the soft snow with our skiis, a task which left muscles we never knew existed burning. Consequently, I am now well prepared for a subsequent life as an ox or miscellaneous farm animal.

Club Med has always been a bucketful of fun because of three things:

1) Really interesting people
2) Very challenging activities you wont normally do
and
3) Terrific food.

I must say, Club Med Sapporo hits all three counts square on with a large sledgehammer, and if you ever want a holiday experience that doesn’t involve seeing Shinto Shrine after Shinto Shrine, I highly recommend it. For your sake though, don’t go during the Singaporean school holidays.

After Club Med, I went to Tokyo. Here I witnessed the full spectacle of Japanese fashion: everyone fell into three broad categories – Over-Fifty, Goth, and Hobo. I saw a man with more holes in his jeans than there was denim, wearing a cap with four different colours, and a shirt that had some badly mangled English idiom with “Sex!” written in purple all over it. I figured that the only way anyone could possibly outdo the Japanese tendency toward outrageous clothing is if they wore pajamas. Which, naturally, is what I did. I walked around Harajuku, the trendiest teeny-popper area, dressed in my OM green pajamas (with thermals underneath, naturally, because it was 2 degrees Celcius). It was fun, and several passerbys actually thought it was a good idea for an outfit. Hah.

There are several things about Japan that I admire, chief of which is their architecture. Tokyo doesn’t have the gigantomania of Dubai or Hongkong. It doesn’t have terribly tall buildings, and the famous Tokyo Tower is just a mundane radio broadcasting station. Yet, there’s something inexplicably quaint about the way a Japanese building looks, a something which a HDB block, for example, glaringly lacks. When you step into a Japanese room, it may not use the most expensive Italian marble, nor have huge neo-classical columns, but it looks and feels good. Using simple wood, concrete and neutral colors, they somehow manage to create an environment that is both comfortable and elegant at the same time. It’s rare that one sees this kind of understated beauty anywhere else.

Second of all, I love their obsession with perfection. The food tastes good again not because they cook it in any special way, but because they obsess over every last detail of the ingredients, from the fineness of the flour to the temperature at which they store the sashimi. The ski slopes were closed when I went because there was a tiny patch of grass visible at one section of the slope. Their contraptions, such as the toilet with more buttons than a stealth bomber, to quote The Sims, are almost comical in their huge range of functions.

Thirdly, the weather is amazing, although probably not through any effort by the Japanese unless someone really invented one of those Gundam climate control things. I swear, there’s something in the air that makes everyone look young. In Club Med, for example, I met a Japanese guy who could have passed for a seventeen year old back home, only to find out that he was twenty nine and married.

Last of all, I am amazed by their civic-mindedness, for lack of a better word. One of the most striking things I saw was when a Japanese man took a drink from the dispenser in an airline lounge where I was and spilled a few drops. He spent the next ten minutes searching for a napkin, meticulously wiping the table where the spill was, which by then had already evaporated for the most part, and then walking around to search for a recycling bin for the paper even though there was a trashbin right in front of him.

Naturally, there is probably a much darker side to all of this that a casual tourist such as myself will never see. A problem that is rather apparent, however, is the almost derogatory portrayal of women. You know there is something amiss when even the parking ticket dispenser has a cartoon teenage girl dressed in a sailor uniform and a very short skirt bowing to you repeatedly on the touchscreen.

Secondly, the way everyone seems to be excessively polite, women especially, seems to have led to the loss of significance of courtesy, with most people ignoring you when you say excuse me or please. They need an Un-Courteous Lion.

Finally, it seemed to me as if they placed undue importance on appearances; while roaming Harajuku in pajamas, I realized that there were only two kinds of shops: those that sold NOTHING but four floors of cosmetics, and those that sold four floors of Lolita and Gothic clothing. It was ridiculous. A sizeable percentage of the women I walked past along the street wore enough makeup to paint several houses, with outfits so extravagant they leave you wondering how much time was spent assembling them.

Nevertheless, I must say that I have had a good time. In fact, some things reminded me of events in Foundation, that fantastic book by my favourite author that our dear friend Collinear so graciously spoiled for me so many years ago. The double decker subway train with seats on top that required passes, for one. Also, I was reminded of a comment by a settler in some new colony in a distant part of Asimov’s galaxy, envying the culture and history of the Earthlings. Being in Japan made me wonder what it must be like to stem from, and be bound by, traditions and etiquette thousands of years old. It made me wonder what it would be like to grow up in a place which hundreds of generations of my forebears toiled to build, and in which everything has been done before. Maybe it explains why all the artsy Japanese films seem to reveal some kind of profound loneliness and frustration with life in general. Ah well; that’s yet another story, for yet another day.

The plane’s about to take off and the stewardess is saying something incomprehensible in Japanese that probably means she’s going to throw my preciousss BlackBook out of the window if I don’t go. Muchos homework awaits my return, and I currently face the prospect of spending my 17th birthday in a military facility in Sichuan, trying to explain the Theory of Conservation of Energy and geosynchronous orbit in traditional Chinese.

Exciting.

A Preponderance of Literature and Rants

2006-11-30T22:51:00.000+08:00

I cannot for the life of me imagine why I read Pride and Prejudice. It is similar to reading Susanna Clarke after taking barbiturates, and without any magic whatsoever. (The reverse would have been much more appropriate, but I'm afraid sff has consumed my mind). The book is a whimsical exercise of extravagant manners and bursting with faint cries of approbation and frilly hats. Still, it is by no means an uninteresting book. Perhaps that is what makes it such an enduring classic.

Today I bought Peace and War, the Joe Haldeman omnibus consisting of all his Forever books (whatever). It is a most lovely book, with lovely red borders. I also borrowed The Book of the New Sun, after an abortive attempt at the NLB to scrounge for more Zelazny-related information. They, too, are most lovely books, and it pains me that I shall have to return them one day, especially as I am much convinced that I shall be liking these novels very much indeed, and I would be most miserable if they were not mine to reread whenever I wished. I have also The First Chronicles of Amber, which I purchased just before I came across a pristine copy of the Great Book of Amber in a second hand bookstore, an oversight for which I am greviously upset.

In an amazing stroke of fortune, I have come across three lovely bookstores at Vivocity and Orchard; PageOne, San, and Harris in Orchard MRT, and I expect I shall be patronizing them very often indeed.

***

V for Vendetta is an great movie in terms of plot and execution. The message was not as well-constructed as I expected. It is a rather formulaic tale about dystopia made spicy with the inclusion of the figure of V, whose introductory speech I have memorized. Still, I can't tell whether he is supposed to be a bomb-throwing anarchist or freedom fighter, and I am inclined to believe the latter, under the circumstances. V for Vendetta has lovely pacing and cinematography; the bombing of the Bailey sent shivers down my spine. The symbolism is rather shallow, especially the fetish on V and 5, but that's alright; it's a rather smart acknowledgement of historical events and a rambunctious character idiosyncrasy Moore and the directors after him could exploit for weirdness. In any case, a great, but not revolutionary, movie, for all the revolutionary claptrap it depicts, like blowing up Parliament - what barbaric splendor mixed up against terrible echoes of recent history, a heady but vaguely shocking dichotomy.

***

I must say I despise reviews that go, "This genre would be doomed if not for so-and-so, whose work has rescued the genre". It seems to me to be quite a dangerous, polemical, and unfairly critical statement that borders on exaggeration. Blase and jaded the professional reviewer may be, it is not up to his bibliomanic sensibilities to measure the worth of a book; if it is conventional yet well crafted and entertaining, and conveys its message arcoss effectively, then its a good book. No need to be groundbreaking or creative to make a work good. LOTR is by today's standards cliche; that does not make it unworthy of reading.

***

Saw EVIL FOR EVIL today in Kinokuniya, the middle book in the Engineer Trilogy by KJ Parker. I'll have to wait until the trade paperback is published. Curse these publishers! And their large pricetags. And their big, bulky novels. Pah.

R Scott Bakker's The Thousandfold Thought
Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora
Aaron Allston's Betrayal
Steven Erikson's Bonehunters

These are a few books that have been denied me by virtue of their hardbackedness or tradepaperbackish vibes. The Mass Market Paperback is an object of immense beauty. After all that has passed, it is beauty.

The first Golden Compass pictures have been released. Daniel Craig as Asriel. How...amazing of him.

***

Crimson Flame

2006-11-27T21:38:00.000+08:00

Tell

The monster resembled a giant lizard. It stormed through the city, breathing flame and burning thousands. Its huge claws picked people off the street and threw them into its colossal jaws. Its muscular legs toppled smaller buildings as it continued its dreadful march through the crowded city center.

Show

The terrible fire lizard towered over the streets of the doomed city. Men and women scattered, screaming, before the great monster's inexorable approach. It opened its cavernous jaws and breathed forth an immense gout of blinding crimson flame. The dreadful conflagaration scorched the asphalt, gouging and crisping the hardened tarmac. One man, not fast enough, was caught in the terrible path of flame and burnt like a torch, screaming in purest agony. But worse was to come. The massive bulk of the creature bore down on the streets. Its claws flexed and clenched, grasping one woman like a vise. Her helpless screams did not avail her. The monster, ravenous, brought his prize catch up to his massive jaws and consumed the woman with a snap of those powerful muscles. Satiated, it roared a stentorian evocation of satisfaction, shaking the metropolis to the core; then it extended a huge, muscle strained leg and, with all its might, struck an old building with blinding speed. The structure collapsed in a damning crescendo of terrible noise of falling men. The dust cloud was infernal. Satisfied, the monster lumbered triumphantly on.

Purple

Only the Titans in their halcyon days could have availed the doomed city, its terrible fate having been foreordained by the tragic circumstance of inevitability. The scudding clouds dotting the empyrean above provided a stark counterpoint as the monstrous abomination ravaged the shaded avenues of the once splendid downtown. Hither did it approach on reptilian legs, its coming the dilatoriness of one who is aware of the inexorability of its terrible, absolute domination. The grand play of circumstance was thus begun, as the dread monster elected to release Hell itself in the form of a great, sweeping crimson cataclysm on the hapless populace, fleeing in blinded horror and panic. The molten heat of the consuming inferno scorched the veritable essence of the thirsting ground, sending up great bouts of smoke, black as the darkest shadow. The imitable torch caught an unfortunate soul in its fiery clutches, electing to consume him in a burst of ravenous flames. The mammoth beast was the instrument of blind desire. Its ravenous hunger now dominated its attention. Bending its considerable bulk, it thus reached down to clutch a woman in its vise-like grip. Slowly, the onrush of anticipation, unaffected by the woman's screams, bore down on it, and casually he tossed his impending snack into his jaws, a world of darkness and agony in the ribbed innards of the furnace of being. Roaring its saturnine satisfaction it reached out a leg and unleashed his murderous power onto the nearest structure. The hapless building held for a moment, then collapsed in a vast symphony of dust and death, the screams of those inside echoing the melody of Fate. Its aggression vented on a victim, it trod on, victorious but uncaring of the role that Fate had provided him.

Abstract

World of heat, sensation of restraint undeveloped, need and want blurred into unified symphony with the will - alien. Alienness. Assailed of speculative hunger and wanton devastation of artifical agony. Therefore the horrors, whence the crimson light of destruction. It burns and is satisfied. It its and is revenged. It unleashes strength in all its simplistic harmony, strength against cowardice, and turns, desiring to be sated to be hungered to be sated to be -

Extremities

2006-11-21T22:21:00.000+08:00

Literature provokes a response. Great literature speaks to a reader to the depths of his soul. The response of the reader is not essentially what the writer may intend; as long as the reader gains something from the work, or has been affected by the novel, the writer is uplifted. Few books have elicted a powerful response in me; the primal quality of such books, however, is that which reaches into the innermost sanctums of feeling and resides there. And when I think of these novels, a powerful sensation will invariably course through me. Below is a list.

1. Watership Down

Watership Down is the defining novel of my childhood; it has a beauty and power I have yet to experience anywhere else, of camaraderie, sacrifice, pain and passion. The writing is modern yet graceful, erudite yet accessible, and communicates every nuance of what Adams wanted the reader to sense. No other writer could take a group of animals and craft them such that they seem more human than the humans in the novel, and yet so animalistic in their society and culture. No other writer could so gracefully weave the rudiments of a completely alien society into a grouping of rabbits so mundane and prosaic in their thinking. Setting and plot are transformed from the rabbit's perspective; the peaceful English countryside is transformed into a tantalizingly mystical land of oppurtunity and danger in their eyes. The descriptions are haunting, evocative and powerful. There is even a touch of gentle humour that keeps the novel engaging even in the most serious of moments. Watership Down is truly a novel that spoke to me, and left an indelible mark on my mind.

2. Lord of the Rings

Strangely enough, the first time I read Tolkien's work, I found the latter portions boring. I liked the pastoral nature of Hobbitry and the mystery of the Barrow Downs, the terrible darkness of Moria, and the sheer loveliness of Rivendell. Aragon's adventures held little excitement for me. The second time, everything changed. Lord of the Rings was transformed into the seminal epic fantasy. Never before had I ever experienced the full scope and power of the novel as in Lord of the Rings, the epic feel, the immersion and sheer complexity and history of Middle Earth. Lord of the Rings didn't appeal to me because of its compassion and humanity, but because of the grandness, density of plotting, excitement, and above all the sheer believability of Middle Earth. Lord of the Rings introduced me to fantasy. It remains one of the greatest books of fantasy written.

3. Harry Potter

Believe it or not, Nova introduced me to this in secondary 4. For the longest time, I resisted this, based on vague notions of incipient YA nubness. I was wrong. Harry Potter is the penultimate escapist work (the ultimate being Star Wars) of the century; it evokes a yearning in the reader to be there, to join in the fun, to know what it is like to be a Hogwart's student. It is truly a book that is accessible to all age groups. Its appeal is universal and undeniable. It invoked in me the old sense of wonder. It emphasizes the importance of love and friendship. It resonated with its sympathetic portraits of school. It became a refuge, a haven from the bitter reality of the world, and as such highlights the reason why Harry Potter is so popular. Its a salve for a bruised spirit and a drug for stress; its curious blend of maturity and innocence is heady and speaks to the reader. This is one series finely conceived, lovingly treated, carefully sustained, and is arguably one of the greatest YA fiction series ever written.

4. His Dark Materials

While Pullman may be abit of a hypocrite with regards to Narnia, his books combine elements of both Potter and Narnia. That is the intimacy and sense of wonder invoked in Harry Potter with the epic scope and religosity of philosophy in Narnia. It is the anti-Narnia, the philosophical counter, but in its way it is just as great. The idea of daemons is truly compellng. I almost wished I had one when I first read Northern Lights. This series has a heartwrenchingly beautiful premise and a heartrendingly shattering ending.

5. Star Wars

The premise of Star Wars is that of an amalgamation of Grade-B Flash Gordon and simple yet powerful story in terms of plot, setting and message. Star Wars spoke to me because of its exotic locales, fantastic premise, special effects, and the compelling dynamics of the characters, as well as its simple but effective message of redemption, goodwill, courage and heroism. The prequels were not technically as brilliant, but TPM spoke to me in terms of its childlikeness and sheer cinematic elegance, while the other two prequels really gave me a sense of the crippling malaise that is corruption and a suggestion of the sheer horrific magnificience of a dying empire. The prequels, by stressing the decay of the Republic, spoke to me of the need for renewal. It is a grand, epic cycle of history. When one brings in the whole regalia of associated material, the books, games, comics etc, Star Wars transcends its mythos and becomes a true sandbox of the imagination and the greatest and most completely conceived fictional universe around, without question.

6. Robot Series

The Robot series, especially the latter two books, are some of the most powerful, moving books Asimov ever wrote, including Prelude to Foundation and Foward the Foundation, and shows Asimov at his best writing about characters. He made me care for Elijah Baley; I felt the sadness at the passing of a great historical figure at Baley's death. It's amazing how he chronicled Daneel's slow evolution towards his ultimate role, and the friendship between Giskard and him. Although the science fiction ideas are a little outmoded, Asimov writes with great power and clarity, and the strength of his prose and the wit, compassion and humour in the plot are truly indicators that Asimov was a true master at his profession. It is the primer for the epic Foundation series, that other great (but not nearly as moving) work, a great part of that grand cycle of future history that stands as another one of the greatest conceived science fiction universes ever made.

7. Terraforming Earth

Jack Williamson's novel about a group of clones who constantly reseed Earth after it suffers catastrophies is one of the most profound and compassionate post-apocalyptic books ever written. Normally, I don't like post-apocalyptic works, but Terraforming Earth was superb in its treatment. The book is intimately recounted from the perspective of the historian of the group; Earth's presumed saviours are fleshed out and realized, the plot is evocative, tragic, and beautiful, and the various civilizations that arise out of the clone's reseeding missions are interesting and original. The book's message of resilience amidst our incipient frailties resounds through the work, setting it in a light that adds to, rather than subtracts from, from its tragic element. Truly one of the best post-apocalypse science fiction novels yet written.

On the flip side, there are works that have inspired a negative reaction from me. I read them and despised them. Or, I disagreed vehemently with them. I'm not saying that these novels are bad, but that I disliked the messages within; they resounded in me and I decided that I didn't like the music. Below is a list.

1. Childhood's End

Deeply unsettling and pessimistic novel about how we have reached the end of our history and how a new species of human will inevitably take over and serve the universe. The seminal posthumanity novel, deeply disturbing in its premise.

2. Time

Another one of those posthuman novels, Stephen Baxter suggests that since the human race is doomed to extinction during the Cosmic Whimper, humanity should be snuffed out to create more universes in order to give rise to other life. Deeply fatalistic and unsettling.

3. Night's Dawn Trilogy

I liked this trilogy, but one aspect of it ruined the experience. The sheer volume of perverse, graphic iniquity is very shocking to the reader, and detracts from the plot. Hamilton would have done better to tone the sex down, by a notch or six. Yes, indeed. And the Deus ex machina wasn't that good either, Mt Hamilton.

Alright. That wraps it up. We should start a thread on CAPERS for such.

Interloper

2006-11-20T22:06:00.000+08:00

Maybe I should never have started on Robin Hobb. I know that hence, every book she writes, I will buy. (Except the latest trilogy, for reasons I shall not deign to explain.). Ship of Magic is heady stuff. Especially given the nautical theme, which I thought I might not have gotten into.

Well, anyway. My prospectus for the rest of the holidays:

Excession Iain M Banks
The Warrior Prophet R Scott Bakker
The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny Robin Hobb
Lies of Locke Lamora Scott Lynch
Spin Robert Charles Wilson

The Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies, well, I'll leave that for later. Much later.

What makes a book good, anyway? There are different answers for different types of readers. There are those who read for enjoyment. There are others who read for knowledge, or cartharsis, or obligation, or for the sake of emulation. A book must have conflict, a raison d'etre for existence. It must have an artistic purpose; whether to express a philosophy, or construct a mythos, or even for the sake of pure entertainment itself. Literature is to be appreciated, and to a lesser degree, critiqued. With introspection of a text comes greater understanding of its agenda, but removes some of its sheen. To analyse too much is to strip away the suspension of disbelief. To provoke literary appreciation of its artistic merits one must reject appreciation of story and world. Sometimes the best way to enjoy literature is to sit down and be carried where the author wishes to take you, to take a passive role in the unfolding of craft and story. To scrutinize in terms of happening, and not the voice of the author speaking in between the lines. Of course, literary analysis is necessary and is part of the author's agenda, but it is usually a secondary one, especially when it comes to speculative fiction. Literature is a canvas, and while we may appreciate the form and function, we are first and foremost admirers of shape and colour, of the apparent, of the simple and the obvious. And that's why I prefer realist art.

I may start another story blog. It shall be inspired by EVE Online. It shall detail the life of a gallivanting ship pilot as he tours a strife ridden galaxy. If there is time, that is.

More More Books

2006-11-18T11:20:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, I visited Parkway Parade and on a whim added two venerable novels into my stack of unread books - Pride and Prejudice and Don Quixote. This transaction was carried out duly and cost me a ten, which was outrageously funny. Pride compels me to deny categorically that the purchase was driven at all by monetary concerns; honesty compels me otherwise, and thus, without explicitly revealing the victor of this internal struggle, have I (paradoxically) done so.

The conclusion of Memory is deliciously symmetrical. Poldarn's story has come full circle and his terrible task is complete. The revelation of his identity was also another clever twist, although I'd already guessed it from the first book (and was misled by an alibi, three red herrings and a volcanic island). It's truly one of those head-bashing moments that come with the inevitability of a revelation, one that's so subtle and yet so blatant at the same time.

Lord of Light is fundamentally ironic. Something I realized today.

I've started on Robin Hobb's book. It's painstakingly written and enormously descriptive; her diction is formal, her characters stylized fantasy stereotypes, her plot and setting rather Eddings. This only applies to the first 10 pages, though, and it is by no means boring, but after reading the gritty realities of the Scavenger Trilogy, the stylized epic form here is a little jarring.

More Books

2006-11-17T12:55:00.000+08:00

It is a good day, on account of the weather. Or it was a good- well, never mind. Clear skies and wind. Although it is clouding over.

It is probable that this is intended to demonstrate a point about the transience of things, especially weather, which isn't only transient, but capricious as well. Started on EE, approximately 500 words done, or an eighth of the whole thing. Then of course, there's TOK and CAS and History IA and World Lit but that's for another day. A tinge of the holiday malaise, that boredom and lack of purpose, contrasted by stark pictures of clinical classrooms; to the extent that going to school is an exciting departure from the routine. Great weather doesn't help, bad weather makes it worse.

The Scavenger series is not easy to read. It is written not as a formulaic epic fantasy, but a character study, and an exploration on the nature of evil. It is dark, subtle, and almost metaphorical. In the end one realizes that one does not read the Scavenger series for light entertainment, something I must confess was my assumption at first. Still, the books manage to be supremely interesting reading, not the least because of the central mystery of the series - the identity of the main character - is slowly and tortorously revealed over the course of the entire series. It is almost depressing to see how the main character, Poldarn, is forced or manipulated into committing evil and objectionable acts, either for the sake of a greater good, or some strange expediency. And yet, there is this lingering goodness that remains despite the truths of his dark past. In any case, however, I get the feeling that Parker was improvising and retconning things as the story goes on. It is unfortunate that I can't seem to find the other books in the Fencer Trilogy, or the second book of the Engineer trilogy, which is in my opinion much more balanced a story, and actually contains elements of traditional epic fantasy (rather, alternative history) encapsulated within the usual character studies and delicately constructed conspiracies.

Next, Robin Hobb. Then R. Scott Bakker. Then all the texts. I shall buy more books.

Books

2006-11-13T22:57:00.000+08:00

Over the past few days I've purchased nine books. Of these, four are English A1 texts. The other five include: Shadow and Pattern by K.J. Parker, being the first two novels in her Scavenger trilogy, Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb, being the first book of her Liveship Traders, trilogy, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, a Culture novel. I shall probably purchase more over the holidays. My current list includes:

Memory by K.J. Parker, being the final book in the Scavenger trilogy
Excession by Iain M Banks, a Culture novel
The Mad Ship and Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb, being the second and third books of Liveship Traders trilogy
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
The Darkness That Comes Before and The Warrior Prophet by R Scott Bakker, being the first two books of the Prince of Nothing trilogy,
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (assuming I can locate it)
The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

I'm impressed with Bank's work. He manages to combine fast-paced action with a compelling picture of an almost utopian society that's very fully realized and intricately detailed. Although the construction of that sort of post-scarcity, machine-governed, fundamentally intellectual-hedonistic society may have been fraught with some difficulties owing to the state of human nature; as it is, humanity's need for material fulfillment is yet one of the primary problems of government and society. Culture society is a vision of libertarianism combined with a sort of lassiez-faire centrally planned economy. It is a bizarre sort of standoff that is not really that explored in the novels; although it probably might be resolved by the fact that the machines, or Minds, can fully anticipate the desires of its populace or, failing that, retains the capacity for rapid construction of the desired commodity for fast gratification in the event that the demand has not been met. Still, waste in a pose-scarcity economy is not a liability. Politically, the Culture is a federated anarchy, where individual habitats retain their own governmental capacity (or such that is necessary for this "perfect" society) while subscribing to a lack of central governmental structure. The problems of anarchy have been resolved in this Culture; factors that lead into chaos in anarchy (such as inability to pool national resources, uncontrolled and unmitigated social ills and violence - which in turn stem from non-access to material wealth - and lack of national purpose) have been excised through the fact that there is no lack of resources, gene engineering has removed undesirable traits from the populace, and that the Culture is bound by no law, which "takes away all incentive to push the limits of what is permissible". Also, although it has no national identity, Culture citizens are bound with a common identity and purpose - as veritable caretakers of a galaxy, and gatherers of knowledge.

Reading Shadow. Interesting but frustrating in its myraid, seemingly unrelated, plotlines. Somehow I sense this is heading for some odd, baroque conclusion. Very formal, dry sort of British wit fills the novel, abit like Susanna Clarke, but less apparent.

Re-read Devices and Desires recently. Refreshingly straightfoward and more lighthearted than Shadow. I look forward to the next book, although it'll be in hardback. Curse these publishers!

Neverwinter Nights 2. Story-driven is good. I've been craving for a good RPG with a stunning, cinematic campaign like the one in Kotor. NWN2 seems to be a good candidate.

Natasha Bedingfield is good.

***

Sea

2006-11-09T19:21:00.000+08:00

I am fraught with a kind of distant despair at the sheer number of books out there that are worthy to be read and to possess. It is, however, futile to even consider obtaining even a tiny fraction of these books, yet alone the total corpus of worthies that are the combined output of human genius and hard work.

Still, I am probably going on a large scale procurement of books soon. I shall procure all the English A1 texts, for starters. Then, the Fencer and Scavenger trilogies by KJ Parker, Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, either the Assassins or Liveship Traders trilogies by Robin Hobb, some Iain M Banks novels including The Algebraist, Ken McLeod's Learning the World, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Yevgenev Zamyatin's We (EE texts), and a Star Wars novel (Path of Destruction), and then consider the difficulty of finding space on the bookshelf to place all these books. As well as bemoaning the large hole in the pocket. These books should last me three months, enough for the holidays. I might try Drawing of the Dark and the Gormenghast trilogy, based on rave reviews picked up on the Hierophant's blog.

More of the Twain

2006-11-02T18:23:00.000+08:00

Once again two months stretch ahead of us. Insert angsty blah about work here.

Okay, we're done with that. Some momentous things have occurred recently. For example, last week I watched The Prestige. I have no time or energy to write a review, especially when the prudent reviewer must needs deftly avoid the subject of the (shockingly) convoluted plot while interspersing pithy insights about how it contributes to the artistic development of the film industry at large, and by logical extension, director Chris Nolan's pants pocket. Let us perhaps, say that it gets rather (shockingly) repetitive at times. Still, there are some odd features of the technical periphanalia that remind one of Xerox and horns overflowing with lush fruit. Still, I would advise you to look closely at Christian Bale's fingers.

I have recently been obsessed with fantasy fiction. Rather, I have been overwhelmed by a deluge of fantasy. First, A Feast for Crows, by George RR Martin. Following We, which is more science fiction in the sff continuum, The Simoqin Prophecies and its successor The Manticore's Secret, by Samit Basu, lent to me by Nova in bitter revenge over my similar act of insidious manipulation, i.e., the seemingly magmanimous lending of A Game of Thrones, a riveting tale that has left him unable to perform tasks that require both hands for a week, which is, in any case, followed by at least 7 more.

Nova will perhaps write about it. The Simoqin Prophecies is written by an Indian and is rather novel (no pun intended). It's written like a traditional fantasy novel a la Terry Brooks and then given a shocking twist. It draws from Greek and Indian mythology and is written in a very tongue in cheek fashion, similar to Pratchett's Discworld. Except this is the GameWorld, the origin of which is not a subject until the second book. The book features two fascinating names: Narak and Kirin. Hm.

I have been thinking of Star Wars. I believe it is an artistic experiment, a treatment on the Campbellian hero-legend in a sci-fi, pop-culture universe. It is an indie film that never lost its indieness, which is still indie, except the company that produced it is a large corporation now, and makes indie films that are no longer as indie, but perhaps indie because stylistically it incurs the wrath of Luddite fans who prefer 'ol' bucket o' bolts', like, "what the hell is an aluminium falcon?" or perhaps neo-Victorian love dialogue is not to their taste. So it is indie and affected by other indies who, by the very act of observation, are destroying the indieness of the movie by demanding the good ol' days where they, as tiny children, played with Slave I toys. But maybe the indies affect indies by increasing the indieness of the said indie, because they are already indie, ergo, they have the right to determine the indieness of the movie, unlike the unwashed peasants that are the masses. No literati will touch that which is already soiled by the lips of the Untermensch that are the amateur. Thus, Star Wars comports itself badly. So does Lord of the Rings. I mean, who reads Pepys nowadays.

Rain threatens to consume the earth. Normally I despise rain but evenings are particularly nice for a heavy storm. Unless you're like, outside.

Wee Shu Min. Undoubtedly she has been misquoted by the press and has been put under mind control by the secret paparrazi organization known as the Flashy Four Hundred. She now lives an ascetic lifestyle and is served by short bald men called Abhishek, summoned now and then to declare statements of apology from her underground bunker-house. Ok. Obligatory mention of significant event over the vast thing that is the Web.

More later.

***

Leaves

2006-10-19T21:27:00.000+08:00

The rain had stopped; the embers had long since faded from angry red to black, when she at last dared step out of her hole. The reavers had long since gone, having taken their share of plunder and savage pleasure. Men and women they had carried off for chattel. Bodies of the old and infirm lay scattered about the burning remnants. Children...they had butchered children, ridden them down in the heat of bloodlust, scattered them and hunted them like they would hunt rabbits. Of course, they had taken them as well.

But her, of course.

She did not remember her father's face. How he had held on to the table as he was dragged inexorably away. His haunted eyes on hers. Rememberance was denial. Rememberance was fatal. She knew in her child's heart, unconsciously, perhaps, that hatred was a winding stair that led her into the fires of Grend. Her father should know. Her father. Who was her father? Only now did it dawn on her to ask. Who had he been? Once she played games with other children, an eternity ago. One particular game, "Hero or Brigand", stood out in her mind now. She had always wondered why the two should be mutually exclusive. Was her father a hero or a brigand? Or both? Grend take your questions, he would say. She could hear him in her mind's ear. Grend was the mage of the netherworld, antithesis of Val, the mountain god. She always wanted why Grend would want her questions, or why he would somehow know all the answers.

She walked among the dead. Ravens cawed and fought for their bounty. The burnt home rose in front of her. The tree still stood, though. Somehow she didn't think anything in the town still stood, it was so ugly and grey and incomplete. There were even apples on the tree. Red apples that stood out against the noir landscape. Red on grey silt and dust. The dust of the dead. She plucked one and bit into it. It was red and juicy and it made her teeth hurt, but it was good, she was so hungry.

When she had finished, the apple core fluttered from her hand. It flew around and settled on the grass like a king. A King with a crown of stalk and dust, and courtiers of dried leaves. How redolent it was, sitting there among the grey grass, pridefully dominating. How the leaves bowed to their newfound sovreign. How they crinkled up with fear and awe. She ate an apple and it became the King of Leaves. She remembered the story of Daer the Kingmaker, who made four kings and outlived them all. What is made can be unmade. That was how that tale was concluded. What is done can never be undone. Her father would never sit by the fire with her again.

She kicked the apple core away. Soon, she knew, it would turn brown and fade and maggots would crawl on it and devour what meat she had not eaten. I shared my apple with worms. I made my King and worms shall unmake him, and eat his noble mien. The apple rolled and stopped. The tree and the garden and the little house, where are they? They are here. The tree is here, the house and the garden. The green bushes that sparkled with sunlight on a spring morning, the grass that swayed with the autumn wind. The apples that would rustle the leaves, the deep and verdant green summer leaves, where are they now? Did the reavers take them too? Or did her father? Did father take them with him when they took him away? The chair at the back, that he had been working on. It was still there. Incomplete. The chair will never finish. Never never ever. What is made cannot be unmade. Not even kings.

She looked at the apple. Not even memories, she thought.

She could feel the tree talking to her. What is done can be undone, what is made cannot be unmade. Thank you, she told him. Then, turning, she left the house, left the apple, and the garden, and picked up a fallen dagger and a sack and walked into the sunset.

***

A Primer

2006-09-29T19:39:00.000+08:00

This is a cautionary post of the tides of time. Tension is backwards relavistic; it radiates backwards in time from the perceived source of the tension-causing event and is thusly assimilated into the unwary and hapless observer far back in the temporal stream. Some are more sensitive receivers than others. The quantitative scale of this receptivity to tension is known as "worrisomeness"; however, the ICS (Internal Common Standard) classifies it as "paranoia". Other, less reputable scales call it "obsessiveness", yet others classify it as a distant derivant of "work ethic". All generally agree on the accepted SI derivation of this measure. It is kgm^2s^-3, which is to say, work done over time. It is inversely proportional with distance to the source of tension. This is known as the Law of Frantic Revision. Unfortunately, it only applies to Ideal Students, because it makes several assumptions about the condition of the experimental medium, for example, that no intersocial forces exist between Ideal Students, or that his capacity to slack is negligible. But there is, then, no such thing as an Ideal Student. The effects of the non-ideal behaviour of some students may be remedied by 1. Increasing the pressure, and 2. Decreasing the heat.

***

The sheer banality of the forthcoming exhortation: The Exams Are Coming! Banal or blase? It is a thing of great debate. For are exams ever mundane? Or are they like a cheese grater? Or worse yet, a great cheese? Exams are necessary. Unpleasant, but the essence of exams go beyond that of testing one's concepts; they are engineered to pressure the growing student, to test his or her diligence, preserverance and time management. The post-exam time will bring with it fruit of plenty, and burdens anew. But on the whole I look forward to the time I can play Civ IV and read up on transhumanism. But now we can only plod on, ever stoic.

***

The Screamer

2006-09-15T23:23:00.000+08:00

Ai. Once there was the Ardent
That once sailed the warm currents
Of the sea. Thousands did it plunder
With gun and leatherbound whip
And the great dog-pirate like steelclad thunder
Did spear the most with his swordtip.

Then there came one terror-dusk
Of raging sea. Storms did take the lives of men
Scurvy-ridden hounds. They cast the ballast
Into the hungry waters, gave their rum to the questing sea
And the Ardent ardently did pray for the mien
Of the sun mordant to be.

But it was of little avail, you see
For the Ardent did sink'st into the sea.
And men and dogs did give their lives
to She. A thousand chests of plunder
Were the payment for her savage fee.

But no sea-dog was he,
Great Dog-Pirate with the iron knee.
He shook his cutlass free and leapt into stormy sea.
Torrential maw consumed him not
That savage spirit
And found a plank did he, with his iron claw
He hooked the rotting wood to his body
And floated away with the debri.

And survived in the raging seas did he
Great Dog-Pirate
And he snarled portents of defiance
To the capricious fates of storm that came to be
Dogs howled in his commiseration
And agonizingly

His shouts were heard throughout the lands around the sea
His hollers herald the night to be.
And quaking landsmen did cower anxiously
At the echoing calls of the Great Dog-Pirate
He of the steel claw and iron knee.
And in the dusk when the night is clear to see,
Huddle in taverns and whisper mysteriously
Of the deep chants and savage howls of he

He, who they name the "Snarler of the Sargasso",
The Screamer of the Sea.

Nursery Nonsense

2006-09-14T19:44:00.000+08:00

The Pied Piper of Paris
had never heard of a ferry,
For when he led the mice
away from the rice
He joined them under the sea

Musings

2006-09-11T18:52:00.000+08:00

These days I feel dry of thought, but the show must go on; blogs must be updated, guns must be shot, and IMF meetings must be allowed to begin in earnest. There will be no cessation of terrors if this blog is allowed to stagnate.

So, I do blog. But it is fortunate that there are issues to talk about. For instance, the IMF/World Bank Meetings. I, for one, must agree with the Singapore Government's ban on outdoor protests. This has nothing to do with the legality or freedom of expression - that issue is moot in this light. But it is true that the Government cannot afford to play double standards towards its populace, either it abolishes the ban for good, which will never happen as long as the PAP rules over this nation (or probably not), or it does nothing and stands firm by the order and, perhaps, restrictiveness that has become a part of the rule of law in this here and now. And there are of course several safety issues that must be observed, for both the would-be demonstrators and the IMF delegates. But its a shame, really, for our image - this is amounting to an image disaster for Singapore, and all the careful preparations - the flowers, the Smiles campaign, the Biennale, are going to seem rather flat when taken in the same dose as the restrictions. I wonder what the delegates think.

***
School rules. I must applaud the disciplinary measures the Student Council is taking, especially with regards to truancy. It's been an enduring and distressing issue that is plaguing the school - this wanton, casual, wilful skipping of classes and leaving school early. Draconian measures should be taken, and they have been. Notwithstanding Alistairs demented briefing the Council's measures are a good step forward. However, the ban on cards is another thing entirely. It, simply put, is nonsensical in premise and I am quite sure it will not be enforced. I've seen councilors playing bridge; cardplaying is a harmless activity as long as it doesnt involve an exchange of banknotes I don't see why it should be considered a violation of the school rules to play it as a purely recreational activity. You can gamble with anything, not just cards - you could bet on soccer matches, board games, and coin tossing, but that doesnt mean we can ban all those things. The rationale for the banning of playing cards is bunk. Better to join the mass of card players than hope to quash the tradition. And I don't even know how to play.

***
I have finished reading Olympos, the sequel to Ilium, and while most of the book was wonderful, the end left me in the dark as to what actually took place. Plot threads have been resolved in strange fashions and Simmons likes to leave some threads hanging. It is perhaps pertinent to re-read it as a future juncture to ascertain what Simmons was writing about. The inclusion of myraid literary elements, including Keats, Homer, Proust and Shakespeare were exceedingly novel, especially when deliciously juxtaposed against the modern-day musings of one of the protagonists, Thomas Hockenberry, a Twentieth century Iliad academic who has been revived by far-future Gods to catalogue their reenactment of the Trojan war as reported by Homer in Iliad. What else is interesting is that Simmons has chosen to make one of his non-human characters the most enduringly human of all the characters; Mahnmut, the moravec. That character is handled with great deftness and care, emphasizing one of the themes of the novel - the power of creative genius to inspire only those who truly understand the essence of humanity. Simmons places great store on the creative genius, reinterpreting it in a science-fiction sense, that it has the sheer power to create metaphorical universes of beauty and complexity. But you have to read it to understand it.

***

Snow

2006-08-28T22:09:00.000+08:00

I have always had a vicarious love-affair with snow, even before my fingers had ever brushed it, or crushed it into soft balls, or handled great crystalline blocks of it to fling over the distance. Funny, how snow, present everywhere in every form, pervasive in the very air around us; that unattainable and precious crystalline form of life-giving water; funny how it never comes to us but in the coldest of climes; and then, when the perfect moment comes, all drift down in mighty cascades of white gold that collapse power lines and turn automobiles into silent mounds of icing-laid cake.

Here in Singapore one wonders how the Northerners in their think parkas must feel, freezing in their little log-cabins, crouching around a fire crackling merry warmth. And yet the cold is its own magic, the silence broken only by wind and the little gusts of white swriling around the conifers. I always imagine the breathy whisper of branches and the almost-silent drift of floating flakes. The feeling of dusk at winter and the deepening blue lit, perhaps, by shimmering carpets of the Aurora Borealis at latitudes far removed from here, dancing life's joy, celebrating the misty snowy night. At times I think of a snowtopped mountain amidst a mighty cluster of peaks, snowcapped and covered in pristine perfect snow; every footstep an ecstasy, a perfectly crafted print that marrs the smooth surface of the white, fine snow that crumbles like sand in gloved fingers, cyan cloudless sky and sun above, craggy peak and blinding snow below, or a vast canvas of starry night that enshrouds the sleeping world in soft night's chime.

I have felt snow, handled it. It was a novel and wonderful experience. It is almost what I experienced in my daydreams, albeit real snow is rather colder and icier than I would like. In towns, much of it is dirty. But pristine snow on mountains, brilliant blue sky dividing the world in two, white and blue. Now, that was postcard perfect in my dreams. Too bad I have a predilection for altitude sickness.

Those who live among snow must feel the strain of cold, must be tired of gazing at the mountains, perhaps wishing for a warmer clime, among palm fronds and iced cocktails and sandy beaches. I love palm trees and coconut trees; they seem exotic to me, and, like elm and maple, are living art, sculptures that grow, statues that change. But I, too yearn for winter and cold, for snow and blue sky and chilling wind and mountain air.

It is an escapist fantasy perhaps, but nonetheless it speaks to me in my mind, dances with my dreams, beckons to me with the promise of the blue skies, that empyrean ocean of wonder.

***

Inbound

2006-08-16T20:59:00.000+08:00

The passenger liner hurtled on through the faux-blue realm of hyperspace, bound inexorable for the centre of the universe. Within its cavernous interior thousands of immigrants, returning citizens, and transit passengers sat and mingled and ate and slept - or did the equivalent of their species - the normal hubbub of sapient activity so native to the galaxy at large.

Genes did not unite the Galaxy, but shared communion of life did.

This was not the era of war and strife, of conflicts that consumed worlds. The Sith Wars had died out years ago; the Sith in hiding or dead, never having risen again. The galaxy was in the throes of its last golden age under the Republic. Trade lanes lay open under the token protection of the Republic Navy. Ships in the trillions navigated the space lanes, feeding the ever-growing furnace of the Galactic economy. At once there was a demographic shift to the more affluent Core Worlds. Planets of renown and legend, names that whispered down the corridors of galactic history - Corellia, Corulag, Alderaan - now found themselves targets of eager floods of suddenly-affluent galactic migrants inbound from less glamorous locales in the outer reaches of the galaxy.

For what seemed the first time in thousands of years of strife, those planets had the resources to accomodate the swarming crowds.

The Centre of the Universe, ironically, had never enjoyed such control. Coruscant, embattled ecumenupolis, bearer of a thousand scars of conflict - motherworld of civilization - it has always been the figurehead of a galaxy that took care of itself. Privy to the wishes of smaller, more powerful conglomerates, like the Czerka corporation or the Huttese economic and political hegemony, Coruscant was bound to play a continuous cosmic game of chance and political appeasement to these myraid groupings. It was little more than a nominal leader to the Core Worlds and not much more than a distant guardian of the Outer Rim, where the Republic was little more than a distant rumour and corporations ruled with absolute control.

With the end of the Sith Wars, however, all that changed. A century of increasing Republic control and propaganda established the political and economic supremacy of the Republic. Draconian trade laws enforced by a heavy hand massively reduced the clout of the hegemonies plaguing the worlds of the Rim. The Republic became synonymous with a force for civilization, hearkening back to the days of the Unification Wars where the Republic brought the fruits of technology to all it encountered.

The Republic became the great civilizing force, the bringer of light, the bastion of progress and freedom. And this brought with it greater control than ever before, with outbound planets supporting the Republic which had freed hem from the clutches of exploitative galactic companies like Czerka.

No longer would a foe find the Republic unprepared for war. Space was a perpetual conflict zone, and the Republic Navy controlled everything. Even the enemy had to use space lanes that had been scouted out. Space lanes could come under the interdict. No foe would ever hope to penetrate the trade lanes that led to the Core.

But this centralization, this peace, would not last. Already it was showing signs of instability. As the disapora continued, balance must be restored. The inbound would come, but along with it, the Mid Rim would sag into obscurity. Lacking its administrators and businessmen and scientists, planets would stagnate. As the diaspora continued, the Core Worlds would also sag under the weight of the immigration of billions. Immigration laws made little sense in the context of entire worlds - it was easy to disappear into planets. Especially planets like Coruscant or Humbarine. The vicious cycle would continue until the Republic would sag under the weight of centralization and stagnation. The bureaucracy would inflate, coorporations would reestablish their footing on distant planets. Power blocs would form, with senators defending the interests of their sectors.

Balance.

Where there are peaks, there are also valleys.

One would come, of an ancient prophecy, he who will bring balance.

The inbound ship hurtled on in hyperspace, carrying the seeds of chaos. To Coruscant it would come.

***

Equatorial Night Lights

2006-08-12T11:11:00.000+08:00

Yesterday I had the fortune to be able to witness (from a reasonably clear vantage point, to boot) the New Caledonia fireworks display for the SFF.

Truly a spectacle, I should say, more so because I don't think I've ever seen fireworks up close before, feeling the urban crush of others around, the mass of people congregating to see and to be excited, the deep reverberations shivering up my legs as cannonade after cannonade of gunpowder-packed fireworks were projected up into the sky to burst in a myraid of coloured streamers of fiery light. There were the usual skybursts of red and golden, and those with two or many colours. There were shimmering cascades of molten frisbees spinning out into the night. There were golden showers of sparkling waterfalls and cunningly aimed explosions that seemed bent on roaring towards us before being consumed by the darkness. There were red ones that burst, and the showers that they released burst once more, creating chain reactions of crimson rain. Smoke obscured good photographs and highlighted others, and deep red shone off their cavernous plumes, and long trails, reminiscent of crashing aeroplanes or crop-dusting aircraft, spun off in many directions. The spectators were kept, enthralled, for ten short minutes as bursts of fireworks ascended in majestic beauty. After that, of course, it was all chaos.

***

The morn still bleeds tears of mist for the revelry of the past night.

A Story of Temptation

2006-08-08T18:19:00.000+08:00

Haven
the Novel

Chpt. XII : The Japanese Pay Babu A Visit

He was in his shop when the Japanese came for him.

Blue afternoon, sun beating down. The heavy drowsing air casting a pall over weary patrons. Babu reclined on his wooden chair, idly shifting coins around on the table. Nearby his bottles of water shimmered wetly in the scintillating rays of the afternoon light.

When the Japanese came, it was without warning.

They came upon you like a storm and before you know it your face is in the dust and blood trickles slowly down the side of your face.

Babu stood, almost purely on instinct, body bent forward in a bow. Almost of its own accord. The other customers had already leaped up, in like postures, all staring at the ground, none daring so much as to venture even the slightest glance at the shopkeeper.

The commander's eyes were like fiery ice on his back, raking the pores on his skin. He could feel the intensity of his serpentine gaze without even seeing it.

The commander's mouth opened with the delicacy of shattering poreclain. His diction was pained, ponderous. "You know about the death of our soldier."

It was not a question. Babu could not deny it, nonetheless.

Nearby a Chinese man was being viciously backhanded by a Japanese soldier. Babu attempted to block the sickening sounds of torture. The screams grated nevertheless. Torrents of vicious-sounding Japanese followed suit.

Arbitrary violence was the Japanese doctrine, the grand strategy for keeping Singapore - Former Crown Colony, Disaffected Vassal of the Empire, Recently Liberated Member of the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere - under tight control.

Abruptly the Japanese commander sat down, a false smile playing on his unpracticed lips.

"I always like your drink."

Babu could only stare dumbly at the ground. He could not have been more surprised if the commander had abruptly begun doing cartwheels and singing an aria to Queen Elizabeth.

The feral grimace (that could almost be a smile) widened. "I tell the men, your drink always good in this hot weather."

The commander was fingering his bayonet. Babu swallowed, sure in the knowledge that whatever role he might be playing in this twisted, surreal little game, this uncanny contrivance of the arbitrary tyrant now dirtying his chair, that he could not possibly understand it. It was beyond him. Thus could he wash his hands off this whole sordid affair, by failing to understand.

"Bring me your drink."

Mutely, Babu brought him his drink.

Carelessly, the commander tossed a coin on the table. Babu eyed it warily, certain that keeping in concordance with this lurid little fantasy, it would morph into some terrifying visage at any time.

The commander's smile faded a bit, to be replaced by a dim expression of annoyance. Promptly, he ordered, "Pick coin up." So Babu picked the coin up.

"Put in pocket." Babu assented, eyes downcast.

The commander smiled a pleased snarl. "Now we the talk." He took a surreptitious swig at the drink and nodded in satisfaction.

Babu, certain in the knowledge that no Jap had ever patronized his shop before, wondered how the commander could possibly know about the goodness of BBB. The goodness of BBB is all-empowering! Babu uses the secret ingredients and best technique to make the drink that will make your day!

Babu's Big Bucks were in trouble. That much he could gather.

"Sit." Babu sat, galled at being offered a seat at his own shop.

"Tell me what you know...about this place, the Haven."

Babu felt a thrill of foreboding course through his spine. "Ha-aven, sir?" He ventured a glance up. "I know nothing about the Haven, sir, except it is a place where orphans go to school, and, you know, things, and I am truly sorry, but-"

"We know about this. Tell more."
"I...I am not sure, sir, what else to say."

Now was the moment where everything goes black and red and stars, he thought.

But the commander only stood, shouldering his bayonet. "You should join INA. Make drinks, meet Bose, free country from British Imperialists."

For a brief brilliant moment the dream of Starbucks floated in his mind. He could join the INA, the Japanese were all over, he could start his Starbucks and sell his BBBs and create chains of stores all over Punjab. He could feature movie stars on his labels and wear tailored coats and sport a Ford car.

For a brief moment, then all was extinguished.

The Japanese shouted commands to his troops and they promptly set off. There was a visible release of tension. Babu was surprised to note that the sun was already setting.

The Japanese had an agenda, of course. But he was a friend of Haven, even if he was not affiliated in the least with them. They were good money, and good friends.

The INA would have to do without his culinary skills.

Perhaps I should start in America instead.

Espying the retreating Japanese, he set off down a side street at a run, determined to get there before the Japanese did.

***

Hahvahd

2006-08-07T08:04:00.000+08:00

I never thought I'd say this, but I really do miss our small island nation with no natural resources. It's been a month and a half now, and the lack of "lah"s and "nehmine"s, coupled with bloody American spelling, is getting to me. Unforunately, while there is another Singaporean here, she's from UWC and is half Canadian, so I've had to turn to Mr Brown to keep me sane. Go ter kwa!

Anyway. Life here is really hectic. Since I'm missing school to do this, I figured I may as well try to get two As - which I later realised is above 95. This therefore entails studying most of the time (so this is what being a wafflesian feels like!). On the other hand, the courses and instructors are excellent, the campus is gorgeous, and the people are absolutely amazing. Most of them aspire to start some literary renaissance, win a nobel prize or solve world hunger and/or villages of starving orphans, so its really difficult to answer what your ambitions are when asked, without sounding absolutely retarded. Currently I've settled on being world hegemon, which I suppose will be kinda neat in due time.

Speaking of Mr Brown, I just went to visit his namesake the week before. For some reason or another it reminded me a lot of good old AC, with a very heavy emphasis on CCAs and a tad less on academic grades. Also, I just returned from an eight hour roundtrip to Yale, which is without question one of the most beautiful yet idiosyncratic places on the planet. For example: in both Harvard and Yale, there are bronze statues with the founders' names below them. People (chinese and japanese tourists especially) pay megabucks to come from all over the world to touch the statues' toes, which apparently brings luck to the admission process. As a result, the toes of the statues are gleaming gold from people touching it and transferring its dust to themselves. However, because all paintings of them were destroyed in various fires, the statues are NOT actually of either Harvard or Yale! Rather, they're just two random people the artisans picked out when they made the statue. Very very silly. More pictures to follow.

The depressing part of all of this is that its going to be really difficult to get into any one of them. A quick trip to the COOP here will explain (in "How They Got Into Harvard, 2nd edition") that unless you're a valedictorian, captain of three national sports teams, and related to the president (yes, all at once), you're better off selling ice to eskimos than applying to a top ivy. Ah well, much work lies ahead.

On the plus side, in two weeks I'll be back. Which isn't entirely good either, because theres going to be a mountain of stuff waiting for me. But I knew this would happen when I signed up for it anyway, and its certainly been worth it, I think. I hope.

Aiya sian already, see you all soon lah.

Alchemy Haven

2006-08-05T10:05:00.000+08:00

Midmorning on Saturday, chemistry practical laid out in the process of exquisite compilation. It is strange, to say the least, how doing something as conventionally frustrating as a practical report can be so cathartic an experience. The very nature of the report requires extensive didacticism and serene, precise organization. The very normalcy of such a feeling inspires a sense of comfort and confidence within the confines of one's labour, and the care that one places in the mathematical precision required by sets of calculations is a testament to an unbridled love of order and organization as needed in all the myraid things of the earth.

Organization, minimalistic elegance and unfettered simplicity are the attributes of the day, a fitting counterpoint to the chaotic mess of school life and the excess of acronyms that must be painstakingly adhered to and paid to by services of pliant lips.

***

Which brings me to the next topic, Haven. A mildly entertaining spectacle of sincerity, a concatenation of laudable effort, a commendable debut of directorial diligence, diffidently delightful dancing, dames, (dowdily dressed), drawling daintily dulcet duets, and nicely drawn backdrops.

I'll spare you the details of the plot, which is rather conventional. Suffice to say that Haven was not as bad as I thought it would be. The dancing was not bad, some of the songs were quite good, veering off the all-too-common NDP-esque medleys that I feared might dominate. The acting was fine, barring the irritating didacticity of the speech, and the flatness of some of the dialogue. The play is sharply divided into two halves in terms of mood - one half is at once relaxed and comedic and features prominently white-clad Indians and Joshua Hoe. The other half takes itself too seriously, is overbearingly preachy, and features Abraham, Pastor Jo, and Victor. But in all the play and the actors acquit themselves well. Abraham exudes "goodness", the Victor guy the opposite. The girls, as usual, acted and sang like they were born to it. And perhaps they are biologically conditioned to acting, being better able to express emotion. Victor sang like he was in a boy band, words slurred, shaking a fist at the world. I suppose that was somewhat appropriate.

One thing I didn't like was the way Christianity was inserted into the play. Granted, there's an obligation, but the way it was done was rather explicit and excessive, with all the "good guys" being Christians and the evil or maladjusted characters being non-Christians. There was also that joke about Shiva, which I thought was insensitive. It seems to me that Haven is trying to portray Christians as possessing all the moral ground. This was unlike Godspell, which expounded on the virtues Christ embodied, which was good, because it is evangelism based purely on the positive values that Christianity possesses, and not the negative values that the rest of the world is apparently drowning in.

The Japanese soldiers were well acted, especially when they were conversing in (faux?) Japanese. I had feared that the Japanese were going to talk in some hackneyed imitation of a Japanese accent. They don't, except the Japanese commander, who spouted a few English phrases in a Japanese accent thick as molasses and authentic as far as I could judge, being unacquainted with the intricacies of the Japanese way of speaking. Which is a good thing, in any case.

All in all, a reasonably enjoyable experience, although I wouldn't watch it again. I shall see how others make of it.

***

On the Force

2006-07-27T19:55:00.000+08:00

I love Star Wars. I love the story, the mythology, the premise, the characters, the cities and the aliens and enduring battle between good and evil played again and again on distant battlefields. And not just the movies, either - the entire body of work that constitutes the Star Wars storyline, from the novels to the games to the comics.

One can tell that a franchise has surmounted the bonds of unreality when an entire community of Star Wars lovers has arisen in both the real world and the electronic one. Star Wars is not merely a successful movie series, nor is its massive popularity a result of nostalgia over the good ol' 1970s (and such arcana that we will never truly know). It has grown into a cultural phenomenon, no less real than Elvis or eating with chopsticks. It is a legitimate facet of global culture - Star Wars is unabashedly Western, but its appeal is universal and it harbors no ill will toward any race or creed (save, of course, those that have been indentified as Profoundly Evil). It embodies a fresh and unfettered view on morality, while at the same time introducing subtle moral vagaries such as the right of redemption. It is simple to understand and yet profoundly deep. The wider universe of Star Wars is a sandbox of the mind, allowing free rein in a galaxy that stretches infinitely in both time and space.

The movies have ceased to be the only defining aspect of Star Wars - the Star Wars mythos has extended through popular media, tinkered with and expanded by the unceasing labours of hundreds of creative minds. It has grown into one of the largest self-consistent chronologies ever created. It is the ultimate escapist fantasy for the Everyman, but it is by no means an ideal world - it is filled with enough grit and noir to please most who look for quality in the grim and the dirt. The gleaming and immaculate spires of Coruscant against the dusty sandstone of Tatooine or the slime-filled sleaze of Nar Shardaa, the insouciant heroism of Luke against the dark and contorted souls of the most conflicted characters in space opera - Darth Vader, Dooku, Exar Kun and the rest. The supercilious nobility of the Senate against the rough but open manner of smugglers like Han Solo and Talon Karrde - Star Wars has characters that speak to us, that we may identify with, characters that can be loved and hated, characters that change, age, mature. No cookie-cutter Rambos in Star Wars, despite appearances. Not even the Jedi are perfect. The Fall of the Galactic Republic echoes that of Foundation and conversely that of Greece.

One of the best things about Star Wars is its capacity to expand. It is an agglomerate of concepts, ideas, and grand mythologies spawned in hundreds of dreams and visions. It is a sweeping and self-sustaining universe, dynamic and ever-changing, encyclopedic in its detail, grand in premise and scope. Star Trek really cannot hold a candle.

To those who scorn Star Wars because it seems like conventional Hollywood fare, simplistic and explosive, you haven't bothered to look deep enough. Granted, the Prequel Trilogy hasn't been brilliant. But the Originals are, along with the vast account of SW history of the books, comics and games, that speak to me more clearly than the gothic travesties of overly complex and grim steamy sci-fi tomes that critics love to sneeringly compare to Star Wars.

In short, Star Wars has transcended mere fiction; more than most, it lives on within not merely my mind, but also in my heart.

Come Potter Finale

2006-07-26T19:51:00.000+08:00

The Harry Potter series is nearing its grand finale, following the release of the penultimate book in the series, the Half-Blood Prince.

What tidings will Book Seven bring? What ill news, what seeds of new hope? What comic affectations and tragic setups? What absurdities, what profoundities, and what tangents will branch off from the great colossus of the epilogue?

Here are some speculations, conceived and brought to tremolous ripening by the warm rolling tides of the postmeridan clime.

About the Great Conflict:

What should happen:
- Harry Potter destroys the last horcrux and confronts Voldemort, who does eerie twisting motions with his eyebrows, and apparates to the Moon after using the Bubble-Head Charm. Harry checks his Apparition licence and follows, leaving his heart behind. On the Moon, Harry and Voldemort face off while fending off strange Moon fairies and explosive decompression. After farting soundlessly into the night, Harry Potter gets sick and tired of the game and points his wand on the Moon's surface, screaming Reducto. The ensuing conflagaration smashes Voldemort into a pulp while Harry disapparates back into Hogwarts and realizes that he never read Hogwarts: A History. Amazed by this revelation he looks up at the sky and sees the exploding moon with tears of happiness brimming in his eyes, while mass-species extinction events take place in America. Soon after sleeping through a civil war he retires into Albania and finds a gigantic canvas containing images from Harry's most intimate dreams. He then find's Quirrell's turban, puts it on his head, and finds a vestige of Voldemort's soul within, along with a flowery note of apology bidding adieu to the world. Amidst the general rejoicing and adulation Harry then writes a book called The Dark Wizard Who Only Wanted to Show the World His Dance Moves, which subsequently reveals that it was the word dark in dark wizard that started all the trouble in the firstplace and Voldemort was in fact a nice guy and didn't mean to hurt anyone. The ensuing controversy destroy's Harry's reputation as a saviour and leads people to call him the Monoxide. Harry then takes Ginny and Quirrell's turban and disapparates to many distant planets, searching for a world where Voldemort can once again show his dance moves. Subsequent novels will deal with Harry's adventures on the world of Luputamia and how he discovered that werewolves were a beautiful species which bit their victims in the mistaken assumption that they would all go into doggy-heaven.

What May happen:
-Harry Potter destroys all the Horcruxes and confronts Voldemort, who will reveal choice bits of information about the world and Harry in general before proceeding to cackle evilly and set in motion devious traps for Harry. While Harry dodges many poorly aimed spells he will discover many things about himself and the world in general. Somehow a couple of people will sacrifice themselves to let him have a shot at old Voldemort, which he promptly succeeds at doing. He will then experience many conflicting emotions and despair.

Characters

Severus Snape

What should happen: While concocting a particularly vile potion Snape slips on his greasy little head and falls head first into his cauldron, causing him to mutate into the hideous reptilian monster known as the Wizzard (to avoid confusion). In tattered robes he then proceeds to battle Spiderboy (aka the spider-bitten Draco Malfoy) in a fit of pique and promptly drops dead for breaking the Unbreakable Vow.

What may happen: During Harry's faceoff with Voldemort he will reveal his true colours and kill Voldemort with a well-placed Avada Kevadra spell (because the prophecy never said they had to kill each other). He will then die heroically.

Draco Malfoy

What should happen: Malfoy gets bitten by a spider and becomes Spiderboy, and expresses his undying love for Pansy Parkinson after placing her under the Imperius Curse to ensure that she doesn't talk back. He later battles the Wizzard, dying in the process.

What may happen: Malfoy will mend his ways and become a stalwart member of the DA, dying in the process like Snape.

Bellatrix Lestrange

What should happen: While torturing little cats with a pair of chopsticks and some boiling water she will trip over a bit of catnip and impale herself on her chopsticks, whilst simultaneously strangling herself on her own knickerbockers and getting knocked down by a passing freight-train.

What may happen: A lot of poetic justice, hopefully.

Sirius Black

What should happen: Sirius returns, for a little while, yet, lo! he is not Sirius Black, who fell into darkness. He is Sirius White, who has returned from death. And he will wander, as he has always done, giving aid to friendly peoples, helping the weak, grudging no favours to the strong, binding the races of Men and All Other Assorted Creatures as one, to face the great Enemy who lurks yonder, in the Land of Shadow (a.k.a the Riddle House).

What may happen: Very little.

Rubeus Hagrid

What should happen: He will come into his own as the rapper. Yo.

What may happen: He may die heroically saving Harry.

Winter Wish

2006-07-24T21:33:00.000+08:00

In Winter

I yearn
For summer solitude

and autumnal ash
Of leather leaves
That saunter down for spring.

That make a laurel crown
For gentle grass and green.

In Summer

I wish
for winter withering

and blinding white
of silent snow
and lakeside jewel-laid.

And midst the quietude,
A snowy enfilade.

On Books

2006-07-17T22:04:00.000+08:00

Like music books are often connected to a memory, or a sensation, or an emotion one feels upon finishing; terrible regret, yearning, warmth, sadness. The best of books induce emotion, yet so do the worst. When do such emotions indicate a good book? When that emotion was identifiably the author's intent, or of a purpose and cause relevant to the content.

Some of the most powerful books induce in me a yearning. It is a yearning for the characters to become relevant, to somehow leap from the pages into reality and engage in a series of illuminating conversations with each other. It is a yearning for the fulfillment of the author's universe, for it to leave some print, something more that merely trivial, on the world. The dreary, less-than-perfect real world more complex than even the most cynical of tomes can effectively describe.

To experience a yearning after finishing a book is to subscribe to the ideal that a book represents. To someone reading a historical novel it is that desire to relive moments enshrined in the past that we can never visit save through the weavings of another's words; to read Harry Potter is to yearn for Hogwarts and magic, escapism into a world inherently magical and exciting, despite the conflict that is so central to the plot progression.

I have always associated the beautiful classic Watership Down with sunlight and gentle wind, quietude on a summer day, despite the fact that I don't know what summer is like, save as an observer in the goings on of the rabbits in the book. And I yearn for the characters to be real, that what has taken place, the heroism and the romance and the tragedy, even, has somehow taken place, has somehow assumed the label of reality, of being real, not merely in the mind, but in the flesh. The stuff of human thought sprung forth into the world, sharing a place with the real and the dull, infusing some life into tired senses.

Perhaps that is why fiction is such a terrible thing; good fiction and its contents are ever fated, like an unrequited lover, to suffer entrapment in the medium of mere words, when the words themselves are like cages of a real beauty, that, like a marble sculpture or an engraving, show off the fine curves of their charges in all their splendour while all the time keeping them from bursting forth into life. And it is up to the reader to imagine that it happens.

And yet, had not the craftsman made the statues, the reader would never even have the pleasure of imagination.

Mr Brown

2006-07-07T21:07:00.000+08:00

I just heard the Mr Brown podcast called "Resident Smilers".

It's revolting, disgusting, perverse, cynical, demeaning filth. It may have been meant as humour or irony, but the manner of its execution is needlessly vitriolic, relentlessly pessimistic, savagely ironic, and grotesque in the extreme, from the poster of the gruesome, surgically-altered grimace to the very content of the podcast.

Is Mr Brown suggesting that we are mindless syncophants? Is he casting the government's harmless and well-meant intention to INITIATE A WELCOME to the WB and IMF summit delegates, an exhortation to just MIND OUR MANNERS, to be the workings of some cynical plot to pander and suck up to Westerners? Is his ironic scorn meant as a jab at the government, or is his portrayal of us Singaporeans in the podcast meant to reflect our true natures?

That podcast is disgusting and demeaning. Worse still, it is told from the point of view of the foreign delegates, symphathetic to them, and it begs the question of who exactly he wishes to criticize and to insult; a relentlessly campaigning government whose aims are, at this juncture, benign, representatives of an ineffectual and unpopular group of delegates, or Singaporeans themselves.

I suppose we should all act our surly selves when they arrive, and throw rotten tomatoes at their passing cars, rather than extending them the courtesy that is their very right as human beings.

Contrasts

2006-07-02T11:15:00.000+08:00

The sun is shining and the sky is blue and the light shafts down in a dusty sky, and it's beauty, beautiful, splendid. Here we are in Common Tests Drudge still.

Trapped in time, trapped in school life. Unlike space, there is no avoiding time, that which is inevitable. It's like being strapped to the front of a bulletrain. Bullet rain, bull trains, bullet trains.

Have absolutely no desire to mug chemistry. Mathematics is now done.

Hearken back to the days of 2005, where the greatest worry now was readjustment to school. Now its readjustment to school and exams and school and more school and EE and CAS and the pressures of being alone.

Music from Harry Potter bounces around in my head, coupled with strains of Euro Techno music and the Chemplanet in the envirochem competition, plus Romeo+Juliet. Or What You Will.

I desire to watch many movies, including Batman Begins, Contact, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Superman Returns, X-Men 3, V for Vendetta. Still searching for the Lindsay Lohan flick.

Desire a nice book along the lines of science fiction. Desire to go out for a bit, set chemfile aside.

Mired, though.

Solitude

2006-06-20T16:52:00.000+08:00

The human drive is a strange thing, teetering oftentimes on sheer contradiction and paradox out of its sheer mutability. I love and despise solitude; the former at times, the latter, not overmuch, and this love/hate is not merely as a product of circumstances, but an absolute enveloping feeling, a blanket that enfolds on my gasping senses and smothers me in the lone corridors of wherever I might dwell.

I am reminded of that terrible poem, Best Society, by Philip Larkin that we did last year, in the high tide of school, most especially of his attitudes to the state of solitude. In his words, solitude becomes harder to obtain as one ages,

And more desired - though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it's just
A compensating make-believe.

Glancing through the archives of others I am struck by how much their discourse dwells on their interactions with others, while my own rarely does. I do not like - I am honest - the teenage fixation with themselves and with people, their never-subsiding interest in the doings of the couple around the corner, with the clique in the next class. Such things have never fascinated me, beyond an attempt, while conducting such discourse with others over lunch, to politely add a qualifier, a statement of my abrogation, amidst the continuing torrent of the other parties privy to such (over the table) discussions over last week's party or the featured and ill-perceived semi-platonic relationships of somebody else's problem.

I enjoy solitude. Sometimes I think I enjoy it too much, and parts of me yearn to connect, to establish axial links to the outside world. This is done primarily through the medium of MSN, especially during this holidays. But another part yearns to cut off links to all but a few special individuals who are beyond reserve, whom I have grown comfortable with over years of mutual understanding, individuals who share my interests and whom I can share the day's thoughts with, or such other activities that reside within my sphere of interest. I like to think that I, in my self-admitted reticience, mantain cordial but distant relations to everybody I know in school, surveying the social scene, insofar as I have an interest in it, with a certain detachment and calm endemic to those who know that they are not subsumed, like everyone else is, into the perceived "fray" of frenetic social happenings or latest scandals.

And yet sometimes, solitude grows heavy. It is a burden to carry solitude, despite the fact that solitude frees you from other types of social responsibilities. Solitude is heavy because it denies social pressure and leaves you oddly free of such things, and yet the corollary effects of embracing solitude are felt when one inevitably re-enters the frenetic world of the social. Human society is nothing else but the totality of individuals working as a collective whole, each human a cog in the vast artifice of humanity. Once you reenter the social world solitude works against you much as rust works against an old car, for me at least, feeble social responses try to initiate and leaves one awkward. Solitude is also like an addictive drug, I yearn for solitude much as a drowning person yearns for dry land. Perhaps not a good analogy, but so there.

There are times, however, that, sunk in narcotic solitude one yearns for the social world, in an odd reaction. One sickens of the reflective, shimmery curtains of safety and wants to be with companions, laughing and sharing jokes and imprecatory statements without a care in the world. I realize this probably only applies to me; gregarious people are, following from my bad analogy, swimmers and are perfectly in their element in the rough seas, perhaps even enjoying the pseudo-weightless sensation and the giddy ecstasy of social discourse. But I am not, by any means, a gregarious person, and the diatribe above is the product of introspection and Hyperion.

Moving to Hyperion, I have just finished the Hyperion Cantos series, and trying to search for antecedent mythological sources. My EE is that ship, prow up, in the high waters of a pirate bay. And the rocks are coming.

***

I just thought of a delightful pun. !nk is truly an !nkubus.

June

2006-06-09T11:12:00.000+08:00

June finds me at a disadvantage. What with having to balance the twin plea(res)sures of homework/revision and the playing of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which, upon perusal of Der Faschist's blog on Diablo II, I have little inhibitions admitting to.

So far, at least, most of the mundane homework has been dealt with. History IA practice is painfully underway. EE has been shamefully shoved into a corner very temporarily. Once I get more reference material, I'll start. The pressures of the CTs are but a distant dream, imperative though they may be. Revision will resume...soon. 16th June is my preferred date.

Oblivion is compelling, despite less-than-ideal computer specifications, combining an interesting multi-threaded storyline with a large portion of freeform gameplay. Although gameplay invariably gets dull after the thousandth dungeon-sweeping. Frequent sword-swinging may just render my mouse inoperable sometime.

But the dull weather beats on and rest evades me. If only the common tests were before June...but wait, they were.

***

Two thoughts have been gravitating in my mind recently.

1

I was rereading Foundation after a long long hiatus of non-Foundation-ness and Hari Seldon's character struck me with a new...familarity. Who else in the world of fiction, I thought, was an athletic, highly intelligent but naive provincial academic flanked by a younger but more discerning female sidekick cum guide who goes on a travelogue-ish romp through disparate locales in pursuit of an intractable academic problem that has applications beyond the mundane pursuit of knowledge, chased by forces who are not exactly what they seem?

Why, Robert Langdon, of course. It probably is a sort of literary formula 101 archetype, because it basically covers the three essentials of exciting fiction: danger, romance and hilarity.

2

I don't think Singapore produces little or no talent relative to its size. Its just that the system here works in such a way that the only way to get a stable job and a good life is to join the government. Or to make a career of opposing it. Or to leave. So the emigres and the government are the talent of Singapore, and as for the budding entrepreneurs of billionaire destiny and unconventional Warhol wannabes and Picasso potentials are few and far between, their kin having removed themselves to the time-consuming task of running the country. In other words, perhaps, the talents of Singapore mostly go the political path, rather than the economic or artistic path.

***

Dreams

2006-05-13T12:27:00.000+08:00

Hestia, she was always the Cassandra of the little Playgroup.

The other day, during Practitions of Kinematical Ability, she ran sobbing to the Playcircle and announced to the class, "A Mercedes Benz R350 just came out of the waste paper basket!"

The scene of the crime was unsurprisingly devoid of any such improbability, though. We stood reproachfully around the offending basket and ignored the sobs of the betrayed Hestia. Miss Moppets, our teacher-in-charge, tapped a red-painted finger on her full lips and considered the surrounds.

"For once, I think Hestia did see what she just saw."

Miss Moppets was a formidable force in our collective sight. At One Point Six Emm she towered still over us like a vengeful giant bent on destruction, her reproach sufficient to annihilate cities. But notwithstanding her vastness the most remarkable thing about her was how she housed her abdominal regions within the confines of a 3-inch cylindrical aluminum pipe, making the two bulbs of her body resemble twin globules of sweetness on a giant lollipop. When she walked on her platforms they wobbled precariously to and fro. Often during our darker moments we shared this collective vision of her vulnerability and traded dark stories on her history.

Presently we stared at her, faculties skeptical but inquiring. The silence was enough to say it all.

She pointed a red finger at the floor, where two streak marks, fresh, graced the delicate granite. Our eyes followed her to the north wall, amalgamation of centuries-old tapestries.

"Observe closely, children." Her voice was marigold on tinted silver and reverberated painfully in the room. It filled us with a sense, an image, of great red dark fleshy organs and squelching blood palpitating in the depths of her trachea, where indomitable golems of bloodred flesh laboured quietly to belch forth patterns of sounds that would rise sickly, bubbly, up to her lipstick-smeared mouth, past her rows of glinting, wet teeth and rolling, wet tongue-stained with black cigarette smears and green mint, forward, blowing back the uvula and making it bounce back and forth like a punching-bag, forward, whistling through the jagged gaps of skin-flaked lips and-

There was something strange about the wall. We stared closely. "Concentrate," she breathed.

Some got it first, others later, but we all did get it in the end. There was a hole in the wall, except that-

It wasn't there.

Miss Moppets placed a hand on her abdomen, which is to say, the aluminum pipe, and announced that she was proud of us. "Only," predator's teeth bared in feral grin, "my children would have seen it."

A voice from the back whispered, "What is it?"

The grin widened. For a moment Miss Moppets resembled a Great White, alien, hostile, and exultant over a prospective meal. The caverns of her satisfaction opened, and for a while, we were defenceless, alone, vulnerable before her infinite might.

Pronounced from the deadly caverns of her satisfaction: "It is a quantummechanical effect."

The illusion shattered. There she was, back again, Miss Moppets, hand on aluminum pipe. "The car exists, or did not. It came, it did not come. And what it did, it could not have done, for it did not exist. The wave function does not collapse, here, in the Playroom."

Seeing our confusion, she pronounced, "The mind cannot comprehend the spatialics of the Higher Dimensions."

Our notebooks were busy for that moment. Hestia's sobs receded into snuffling. "Hestia." The sudden import of sound was earsplitting. "Come here."

Hestia went, shaking with fear.

Miss Moppets regarded her from above. "You showed remarkable potential, Hestia. The ability to dictate quantummechanical reality. I have decided that you shall ascend, despite your lack of training. Children," she addressed us, "Hestia is leaving. Her delusions have not, in fact, been delusions. Her fancies have been realities. She has the ability to conjure dreams from reality, and reality from dreams. She shall Ascend."

Hestia disappeared, then.

Years later she is an idea, a representation of a quality, a force. Like Minerva, she spawns from dreams. She spawns dreams. She is a goddess, and she has become endemic in the minds of men.

***
Okay, got the idea from American Gods.

Charles Stross and Other Matters

2006-05-09T18:59:00.000+08:00

Since Perdido Street Station I have cultivated an ever-growing interest in steampunk, which is to say, that particular genre of novels that deal with the themes of the dynamic between magic and technology, usually represented in the typical Victorian "mechanized civilization" and corresponding "magic" elements in society. Steampunk must be dark, gritty, and Gothic. It must defy some mechanical rules; essentially, it is an atavistic, fantasy version of technopunk.

As a testament to this newfound interest in steampunk I have been digging into Rise of Legends, the "spiritual sequel" to the famous and Nova-beloved RON, as well as having recently purchased KJ Parker's Devices and Desires, which although not categorically steampunk, has some nice drawings of pistons and pumps on the cover. (Come off it, it's called the Engineer Trilogy, for all's sake. And medieval Dukedoms are a worthy substitute to magic-spinning voydanoi.)

I have also been trying to broaden my sci-fi tastes, in a grandiose effort to 1) expand my science fiction reading circle, 2) aid my EE research. So the other day I stopped by Kinokuniya and acquired one Iain M Banks book, Consider Phleblas, and the two Charles Stross ones on the Eschaton - Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. Suffice to say, Bank's seemingly action-centric narrative hides a deeper significance encapsulated in the title that no doubt has links to the question of the moral right to sovereignty and overlordship of a certain Culture in the novel. Stross, on the other hand, is hailed for his innovative sci-fi universe and blazingly new concepts along with the "Benford-like care", as a reviewer put it, in his works. I never liked Benford because of the Second Foundation series. Nor David Brin neither. I preferred Iron Sunrise of the two, although it was more conventional. Iron Sunrise seemed more complete, with a clarity and direction rare in books of such scale.

I have yet to expound fully on my liking for The Parent Trap. Since I seem more loquacious today, it shall begin hence. The Parent Trap is a testament to the fact that innocent, carefree movies cannot be consigned just so into the rubbish dump of bad movies. Merely because it lacks the "real world grit" of machismo-ridden, film noir angsty jungle-world Oscar-winning scions of the Great Directors doesn't mean that it is of little value, relevance or profoundity. The Parent Trap is a cohesive mixture of comic action, serious themes in life and relationships. Lindsay Lohan performs her dual roles with near perfect polish, rendered doubly noteworthy by the fact that her two characters are so different. Her acting is one of the best things about the movie and is a major reason why this movie is a must-watch. Besides, although including the inevitable reunion, the plot is not as cliched as I had thought it would be. All in all, excellent performances from all, and although six years old, The Parent Trap is as fresh and relevant as it ever was and will be.

Tests. Firefly and Serenity. Rome. Chemistry Practical 9. All these things; they trouble me. All the obligatory projects and long-term mash of must-dos. IOP. Group 4 project. TOK. Math Portfolio. Common Test.

Respite eludes me. That's it. I am done with the obligatory blog-rant.

No matter what I cannot seem to summon up the resolve to write about Shanghai. I have enlisted the aid of Nova, who has much to say on the matter.

The weather seems to be improving, with the exception of the heavy rain of a few hours back. The blue sky reminds me of America and other temperate countries. Blue sky is, for me, indelibly associated with OM and holidaying. Sunny days and cumulus cloud-dotted skies are my favourite type of weather.

PAP won again. I was hoping that the Opposition would get a full GRC this election, what with the furore over 47 contested seats and such. Apparently not, with the system skewed such that possible pockets of opposition support are integrated into the pro-PAP GRC fold. The PAP overreacted. I cannot believe that it would honestly think that negative attacks on the opposition would rally public sympathy to their cause. Gomez was a clear miscalculation, and I think they knew that along the way. But what irks me most is that a PAP minister would actually say after the whole affair had come and gone that "Don't Worry, if you voted for the opposition, you're still pro-Singapore." Thats an ultimately arrogant and fallacious statement on several counts. First, it assumes that people are naturally inclined to think that the Opposition is anti-Singapore. Second, it's a smug assertation of PAP superiority and a tacit assumption that voting for the PAP was the "right" and "pro-Singapore" thing to do -which, although correct to a certain extent, suggests an overturning of the democratic process in which the moral right of the voter is asserted. Third, it just sounds so arrogant, especially coming after the shameful things the PAP had to pull in order to discredit the opposition, like the ruckus over Gomez, the carrot-and-stick approach to the Opposition Wards in Hougang and Potong Pasir. Those two wards remain to this day poorer districts of Singapore. I honestly cannot believe that the PAP thinks it is right to pull such outrageous and plainly insincere stunts. If a governing party rescinds upgrading privileges for the sake of getting more political clout, it has lost some of its mandate, no matter what the analysts say.

It may be that the PAP honestly believes that it is the only party that can handle Singapore, and responds as such. And perhaps it is. One cannot discount the incredible things the PAP has done for Singapore over the years, or attribute it to luck or regional climate or any such half-baked reason. One cannot deny the fact that without the PAP, it would have been so easy for Singapore to slide down the path to darkness and obscurity. But disregarding our obligation to them, and their contuining effectiveness in running the country, the utilization of strongarm tactics like these is simply untenable and shameful, and gives the critics more meat to discredit our nation.

Let us hope that GE 2010 will see a mellowing of the PAP's campaign and the inclusion of an increased opposition.

CAS. A fruitful Monday afternoon works wonders on the mind.

With all this talk of OM, memories once again surface. I remember Iowa, Boulder, Chicago; all the American cities I visited; the bookstore at the Uni, the teen's party of such American exuberance, the trading of pins and T-shirts. The pain of OM. The utter agony; listening to Enya and Blue (Da Ba Dee) while working on props that seemed never to get done. Waiting in the Glenn Miller Hall and emerging sans a mask.

Funny how remembrance blurs the pain. And how merciless is time and transition.

***

Rumination II

2006-05-07T21:38:00.000+08:00

Shanghai was...interesting. It's changed so much since I last went there, and that was only about a year and a half ago. Many things have remained the same, though. Its beauty; its ugliness, its modernity and parochialism all mixed together like every other city humanity has ever spawned at one time or another. Shanghai has grown beyond its people, a first world city still amongst third- to second- world attitudes. Like Singapore in the 1970s, perhaps. Its people are catching up though. With frightening adeptness.

I wouldn't want to live in Shanghai, though. Unless someone gave me a million dollars to furnish a reasonably high-end locale establishment in-city, preferably in Pudong. Nova will again provide details on the trip, if he wants.

***

It's saddening to watch the Parent Trap, delightful though it may be. The Parent Trap owns Mean Girls hands down, which is a primary imperative for me to go search out a VCD of the movie and keep it for posterity. It's saddening because Lindsay Lohan is currently engaged in discreet drug-taking (or is alleged to be by vengeful paparrazi) and the production of "sexually suggestive music videos" in an attempt to be a cross-platform teenage drama queen (hah). Contrast to her double role as the twins Who Decide to Reunite Their Estranged Parents in the 1998 movie, where she, like Macaulay Culkin before her, is/are the quintessential mischevious but good-hearted kid(s) who swoop(s) in to deliver the oversized double whammy of feel-good comic action Against the Antagonists. Two words that bespoke of the cruel inevitability of change: Growing Up.

Postcards from Shanghai

2006-05-03T17:12:00.000+08:00

It was a song that had been playing on my way to the airport on the day of the flight. "...send me picture postcards from LA..." sang Joshua Kadison. Seven days and half a week of rumination and distraction later, I can only present a URL.

Shanghai-Suzhou OEP Pictures

The connexions are clear enough. When we are ready, perhaps we will furnish this place with some reflections.

Silence

2006-04-06T19:32:00.000+08:00

Silence-

That is what we embody. Facelessness, uniformity, soulessness - those are not words for us. We were never faceless. To claim that would be an abomination of the highest degree, for it is the contempt of millions and a whitewashing of a myraid coloured lives. We were never uniform. No doubt clad as such, long ago, but never little matchstick men, to be struck dry without discrimination or rancour.

Why? Why do they label us such? And why, why do we listen?

We are silent. Whether it be conditioning, cultural or otherwise, I do not know. But our silence dances in the lecture hall. It revels in the empty grass in a corner, it echoes in the pages and pages of white officialdom.

No, we are not voiceless, for we speak. Our talk is voluble and varied, spicy and flavoursome. But we are silent. As we often are. For we think that there are only two notches on the lever that may express dissent - none at all, and to the extreme. Cautious probes forwards are diverted with benign intent. Radicals are eliminated as threats to the state.

The voluble minority trades correspondence in the underground of the cyberage. Their electronic ministrations trickle powerfully down congested highways, and are sniggered at by self-important revolutionaries. Dissent and radicalist anti-intent evade the peering eyes, the scrutiny, of the powers that be. Lies and mistruth and shocking indignities are bandied back and forth among dwarfs and titans of the age. Such is steam vented and virulence transmitted, the shocking contagion of the networks and talk-webs.

But, in the arena of the real, they are silent. Shockingly, incongorously. Silent.

Globally,we are silent. We maintain pomp and dignity that belies our stature. But, down here, we are silent. We are savages from a voiceless land. We communicate using arcane ideograms and inscrutable hand signals. At the shock of our volubility, paradigm shifts emerge and fade rapidly into obscurity. Always gracious, always tight and correct, and they fall for our conjuror's tricks, they fall for our facades and performances everytime. We are charlatans who hide the real cards from view. We are silent.

They talk of our cosmopolitanism. For we are nomads bound to a meandering course and a distant womb that beckons for deliverance. We search for our Canaan, never realizing that we have already left it for greener pastures. We are thanklessly globalist. For our paucity makes us dissolve within the congealing mists. Such that we find cause to trumpet the recalcitrants, those that refuse to fade away into mist. But their voices are silent, stridence unheard in a voluble wind. For they are too few. And they cannot be too many.

Perhaps our lives have been structured around silence. Perhaps the race has been run too far and too fast. Perhaps, in our ceaseless wandering, we have missed the oasis, or seen it fade in a relentless mirage. For we are too caught up in our private lives to speak. And the world is too seemingly perfect, in its crystalline silence.

For once broken, we fear the futility of picking up the shattered pieces. For, but for its deep unfathomability, we admire its unbroken skin. And the passersby, varied as they often are, speak without regard for our values.

Wherefore apathy, agreement, or guilt, I do not know.

But we are silent.

***

Perdido Street Station

2006-04-01T20:21:00.000+08:00

Perdido Street Station is a celebration of grotesquerie in every sense of the word. It is an almost revoltingly eclectic conglomeration of the most far-reaching and diverse themes, motifs, and symbols in the realm of speculative fiction, sprung forth from the most fecund imagination of a British author set to outdo all his contemporaries in the deliverance of the perverse and the macabre.

It is interesting how British authors, most of all, seem to revel in this brand of macabre fiction. We see signs of incipient madness in giants such as Peter F Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, and others. Mieville's New Crobuzon is the student of their devices. Almost from the beginning it is depicted in such filth, chaos and despair that the reader is disinclined to take the author's words at face value, assuming, rather, an unsubtle attempt at hyperbole. New Crobuzon itself seems to be an agglomeration of various disparate elements of other brilliantly realized worlds. Its post-Victorian air and cheerful debauchery recall the city Ankh-Morpork of Pratchett's Discworld. Its macabre fusion of machine and man is reminiscent of Alistair Reyonld's Inhibitors series. The mindbending horror of the slake-moths is perfectly captured in the ruinous depredation of the undead in Hamilton's Confederation Universe novels. Yet what sets Perdido Street Station apart is the author's casual treatment of this deliberately instituted filth. Mieville achieves this effect by making New Crobuzon the centerpiece of his narrative, in an acknowledgement of the setting as an integral part of an appreciation of the novel.

New Crobuzon is set to become a defining landmark in the techno-fantasy playland. With it Mieville conceives a whole new way to unite science fiction with fantasy, creating something so new and unique that it defies all current boundaries. In Mieville fiction refuses to conform to boundaries and bleeds cross-genre, something that perhaps only readers as modern as we are are prepared to accept. The defining thing about New Crobuzon and its world, Bas-Lag, is that magic becomes a scientific and technological curiosity, a plaything for engineers. It is a world where stuffy academics from established institutions mutter hexes with impunity and self-styled mediums use electrochemical cells. The chief theme seems to be fusion, and Mieville's work embraces the concept on all levels, especially in the deranged Motley and the phenomenon of the Remade. Mieville's world is overrun with strange forces of chaos that foster unity and disunity at will, and this allows him an excuse to set his imagination loose, filling the hundreds of pages with strange constructs (pun intended, don't even try to guess what this means if you haven't read the book), macabre creations of darkness and light, and the occasional non sequitur irrationality ala Douglas Adams. It is a world where eldritch realms share space with the physical and phantasmorgic entities roam before an incredulous science. Despite this seemingly fantastic realm, however, Mieville's characters are real and tangible, with real lives, insecurities, and attachments. And many of Mieville's ideas have real-world relevance, being metaphors of such issues as homosexuality, ethics in industry, and the dangers of unrestrained advancement.

All in all, Perdido Street Station is a testament to the power of grotesquerie and an unrestrained imagination. While I have yet to finish the book, its been a jolly disgusting ride through much filth and excitement.

A Short Allegory

2006-03-26T21:36:00.000+08:00

In my journey eastside I have encountered many things. As I emerged, face drinking the sun, just starting on my journey, I felt liberation and anticipation for what was to come. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, as we are wont to say. It was good to stand tall after crouching for so long in my dark study. The first days were hard though, with me so unprepared and all. But walls crumble in time, even in ten years of horse-labour. After some time in dark tunnels (not so dark, light, after all, streams in from both sides), I emerged into a vast quilt of lands. I tell you, the landlords weren't too happy to see me walking without a care in the world, as if I would crush their flowers. Crossing the chess-board patchwork of parcel-estates is hardly fun, though, given that the sheer heads of the master-pieces are staring down stonily at you. I was glad to get out from there without starving as I was wont.

Casting down my sword and spear, for my need had passed, I went on to what I considered safer lands. The Mille fontaines were beauteous, as were the murals in the cavernous halls that I rested in. You must understand that vast tracts of the land lay fallow and uninhabited, the canvas of human life, being, as it were, heavily skewed towards centralization. But there was a man with donkey's ears, and he followed me silently for as long as I remained in those lands. I was disturbed at his quiet, fervent intensity, but I never went near him.

Further on was the place known as Krieglander, which I understood to have once been the fallen legacy of a god-empire of old, but, ironically, was neither divine or much of an empire. The Reicheroberer changed all that, of course. The land here was tilled and orderly, and folk greeted me with more vigour that I would have expected. Distant lands that carried sickness became distant lands that carried riches, and smoke, black smoke, appeared on the horizon. And, somehow, night never came for a long time.

I trudged through ditches and tar, all the way. And before long I came into a land of night, a night that wasn't, a night that was grim beyond despair and reeked of death. But suddenly, that too, disappeared in light, blinding light that I knew was a salve from heaven and hell.

East still lay a long way away, though. The road leads ever on, and I did not feel liberated as I laboured forth. But at length a vast wilderness lay before me, dotted by trees and a discarded parka here and there, crisscrossed by countless tracks and marked with craters. There was a bistro there, incongrously lighted in the long night. I was hungry, having braved much without so much as a bite, and I was cold, and tired, having no place to sleep. So I went in.

Inside was warm, but not as warm as I would have liked. An electric fire crackled merrily behind the bar. Two lights swung above the room, one above the bistro area, one in the bar area. I wondered where they got the electricity from. There were people inside when I came in, tall, gaunt fellows who sat around nursing clear spirits. The lone waiter and the restaurant manager, in contrast, looked mighty well-fed. Around the bare room were pasted posters, large coarse ones with messages like "GOOD GOING" and "ALL THE SAME TO US" imprinted in large block letters on them, and the bistro was creaking like a house in storm.

The waiter didn't budge. I knew he knew I had come. He lounged at the corner studying me. At length I could hardly stand my hunger and thirst and approached the waiter on weak legs. "Excuse me," I began. The waiter showed no sign of having heard. I went on anyway. "Some water, please, and a sandwich."

At length he turned toward me. "Scrawny looking thing, aren't ya?" Mystified and affronted, I said nothing. "I'll get'cha what ya want. Just be sure ya don't mess up the place, like, by pissin' all ovah the floor like. I know you. Ya do that all the bloomin' time."

I turned tail and headed towards the manager. Surely an explanation is not required. But the manager is already waiting for me, hefting an axe. "I most heartily express my disgust at your employee over there," I said, pointing to the retreating waiter. But the manager only smiles, walrus moustache bouncing away. "And why do you think he would rectify his behaviour, peon?"

I sputtered.

Menacingly, the manager grins at me. "You're all the same to us, see? Who cares about you, when we have so many others to use? Why should we extend services to you, you with your decadence?"

This is obvious to me. "Because you will have no customers. They will leave you for better alternatives. We deserve better than this!"

"Is it indeed? Look around you." The manager smiles. "Remember how you came. Look around you! Look at the wilderness of the world, lost among the uncaring universe. Do you honestly think, in all seriousness, that there are...alternatives?"

***

A Mun of Fun!

2006-03-22T18:37:00.000+08:00

Apart from being the, and I quote, "largest collection of white tits and ass you'll ever find" (no prize for guessing who said it), SiMUN was actually quite a lot of fun. Especially because among the (very many) white asses were those belonging to our dear friends from RJ, who could quite possibly rank among the coolest Rafflesians on the planet.

Take this for example. In my committee (ECOSOC), we had to debate a resolution on indigenous peoples, which the delegate from the DPRK (pity it wasn’t assigned to Hwa Chong, haha) spoke against. Now, the delegate from the very...interestingly..named Democratic People's Republic of Korea was a perfectly square man in every sense of the word. Heck, if he stood behind a screen, you'd see the silhouette of a sardine can securely fastened onto a Lego brick. Replete with little bristles of hair for other Lego bricks to connect. I'm not kidding. And when he walks THROUGH the screen, in that typical no-mere-wall-can-dissuade-me-from-changing-my-glorious-direction North Korean way that he does, you'll find yourself face to face with a monolith of black on black, replete with a red tie. Talk about getting in line with your country stance!

Anyway, so he walks up the podium, and begins his speech AGAINST indigenous rights, saying how they should all be left to rot because the resolution doesn't concern North Korea anyway. At the end of which, the submitter of the resolution stands up and says: "Well, perhaps Our Dear Leader forgets at times, but does the delegate from North Korea not realise that fully five percent of his country's population is indigenous?".

At this point, most people in the auditorium are thinking: "Oh, shit, now he's dead". This guy, however, is absolutely unfazed, stares at the speaker for a while as if he just babbled something incoherent about Bill Clinton's continued moral impeccability, and goes in a perfectly even voice:

"The delegate of North Korea is not aware of this, as North Korea is only comprised of 100% loyal North Koreans."

Clearly t3h win. Especially because after that, Iran accused North Korea of wearing clogs and therefore having a poor human rights record (best link ever, right?), and North Korea ACTUALLY broke down on stage and sobbed "North Korea is ONLY trying to work with the worldddd!" in the most heart wrenching voice EVER, like Mike Tyson suddenly deciding to convert to the Jewish faith and spontaneously breaking out in Hebrew choruses, while spitting out half digested pieces of Evander Hollierfield's chewed off ear. Sweet.

Oh yeah, back to the point, this guy's from RJ.

So, anyway, my own experiences at SiMUN were pretty cool in themselves. It was surprisingly easy for a first timer, and you always know it’s a good thing when someone walks on stage within the first five minutes and makes an announcement that goes:

"Bee bee boom. Sorry for the interruption, but would all Anti-imperialists assemble here please? America, please piss off. Thank you."

America, however, was too busy studying for her term test at home to be mortally offended. Anyhow, at the end of the first session, I had managed to persuade all fifteen people doing the same issue as I was (landlocked countries) to use and back my resolution instead of theirs, which was strange, because it included all the anti imperialists (i.e. Iran, Cuba and Libya), but ALSO the UK, Japan, Australia, and

Canada

. Funky. Then I convinced the people who WEREN'T doing my resolution to vote for it anyway. Skillz.

Due to the incredibly large number of supporters (it's diplomacy, not whoring! I didn't buy them chocolate or promise them dates or anything, the latter of which would have been used as a mortal threat. I merely showed them off the floor (no one listens to debate) how truly l33t the resolution was!), our strategy for getting the resolution passed was this:

Chronology of events;

1. Toitle Reads Resolution

2. Toitle makes speech, and passes to other delegate

3. Other delegate yields to chair, FOR time begins

4. Fifteen delegates jostle to speak during FOR time, always yielding to another delegate, then back to the chair

5. Against time begins, BUT is rudely interrupted by a motion to move directly to open debate (where you can speak both FOR and AGAINST), which is seconded by about half the room.

6. Another twenty delegates jostle to speak during open debate, all of whom are For, effectively drowning out opposition.

7. Should opposition arise, almost every country raises its placards and pwns the speaker with POIs

FTW!

So yeah, it was pretty cool. The only problem being that Bolivia was never supposed to play such a significant role in world affairs, as evidenced by the Chair recognising me THREE TIMES, no less, as "The Delegate of Brazil". To which i replied, after the third time, with great consternation, "We like to call ourselves Bolivia at times. BOO-LII-VIAAA. The one that sounds like an yeast extract."

The only aberration was that Jordan DID decide to secede from my coalition in the end, the only reason being because he wanted his name as main submitter. For a resolution that benefits Jordan the MOST of all the countries in the world. Even though there was no best delegate, or delegation. WTF? The only point he had in HIS resolution that wasn’t in mine was this: (I swear, I'm not kidding.)

"Recommends the UN led growth of the plant [long Latin name that probably just means Grapefruit] in African states, for the purposes of providing water."

He never got to hear the end of it, and we (Terence and myself) tabled his resolution indefinitely by a huge majority and got ours passed in committee. Whoops.

So anyway, after three days of constant speaking and haxxing, it finally paid off in the GA when we got it passed 39-5, DESPITE Greece's frantic attempts to slam it as the "embodiment of everything that is wrong with third world dependency". Nice try :) The US went up, spoke for about five minutes on why the resolution sucked to hell, and then voted FOR it because twenty people wrote and told them to. Dumb Greece. See, no one actually listens in debate, unless you tell them off the floor. ESPECIALLY if your article invokes Article 76 of the Law of the Sea, WTF. Insomniacs everywhere rejoice. :) Just kidding Mun. Really, great job, on a really spastic topic!

As for the previous post, the message by Nova was sent to me just before the vote, which was really really tense but rather anti-climatic in the end, because of the huge majority by which the resolution got passed. HELLenic Republic indeed. And sorry Nova, about your resolution, it really wasn’t about Greece breaking the mutual pact, your resolution really did have some problems (i.e, it tried to ban torture, zomg), and Bolivia IS a socialist state after all. (We use Special Police Units to shoot crack farmers.) Ah well. All in good fun.

And good fun it was! At the end of the whole thing, because of the way we worked so closely together, I befriended about half the people, and got their contacts. (Haha if I didn’t, I'd be a political bastard. and I counted okay! 13 guys and 13 girls. So. Not. A. Flirt. Unless you're implying I'm gay, in which case I am So. Not. Gay. As well)

GA was actually pretty fun, particularly because we ended up playing proxy bingo. Now, for all of you unacquainted with the system, in a MUN you aren’t allowed to talk. Instead, you write messages on pieces of paper, and these little people (half of them called Igor, no doubt) scurry up to you and transmit them first to the chair (for censorship), then to your targets.

Proxy bingo goes like this. As with normal bingo, all participants write down numbers from 1-25 in a 5 by 5 square. One non participant, in this case some UWC girl, thinks up a number from 1-25, in this case say 21, and writes it on a piece of message paper. The message then goes to a bewildered securitariat and the chair, who wonders what on earth "21" is, and perhaps thinks that it’s actually half of the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, and thereby has hidden significance somehow relevant to the conference (read about the cool messages that went around on Shivana's tagboard, lol). They then pass the thing to all the participants, who cancel out "21" on their pieces of paper, and the process continues.

Five in a row wins. Upon which, you write BINGO! backwards as !OGNIB, replete with click and all, and send it to everyone. Hurrah. The chair thinks you've just discovered the meaning of life.

In fact, it got so mundane at one point that I was about to initiate a vote of no confidence (which my coalition, now much larger, wanted to support) in the Sec-Gen for the heck of it when the conference closed abruptly! Daymn. It'd have been good to sit on that chair, and my agenda would essentially have comprised of have three items:

1. Creating a new voting system where every item of clothing removed by a delegate on the floor counts for ten votes.

2. Legalising the phrase "Tabletop Dancing is in Order", and motioning for that with immediate effect

3. Mandating within the UN charter a decree that every chair-in-training pass through the initiation right of chanting "Bolivia" six times while stepping on hot coals.

After which I'd pass the floor back to the previous Sec-Gen for her closing remarks. Lawl. Oh well, there’s always next year :)

So anyway, to everyone who took part in SiMUN, great job! Bolivia team, nice try, Hoe, you really should've gotten best resolution for yours, too bad the majority of your Committee had the sense of humour of a slowly rusting mess tin. Ah well, better luck next time!

Congrats to Mun and Sam for special mentions, and to Mun for best res. Lol, you trix me, you said ALL of them were awarded to non-debated ones, so I thought that included yours! Never mind. Poor Augustin, brother of mangosteen, sorry you were the Chair, man.

To all my new SiMUN friends; you guys were awesome, really, some of the best orators I know! Thanks for your support, let’s keep in touch!

Finally. For EVERYONE else who didn’t take part, DO COME NEXT YEAR! It’s an unbelievably great experience. SiMUN says, JOIN NOW. Now. NOw. NOW. (Notice the varying tones of voice to gradually hypnotise you into believing me. Yeah, SiMUN's that effective. :))

Nowwwww.

Actually, join ThiMUN. At least it’s not held at the Lychee Franchise.

Frustration

2006-03-18T16:53:00.000+08:00

Here it comes again.

It's strange, but I have a predilection for being immersed in bouts of frustration at painfully intermittent periods of my life. Simply put, I'm pent up in frustration and a sense of mental claustrophobia, as if walls were closing in on me. At the same time there's that constriction and senselessness and that feeling of being cut loose, adrift on a wide sea, to borrow the oft-used metaphor.

Right now some worries gnaw at the back of my head. There is, for example, the SRP conundrum. SRC on Friday managed to paint a rather grim, unfriendly atmosphere for us prospective researchers - as if we are inmates being thrust into hard labour with unfriendly and reluctant supervisors to monitor our activities. The first part of SRC was fairly interesting sans the deliberately abstruse project presentations, but the latter half performed admirably in its capacity as a wet blanket. Or perhaps sour grapes. Based, as it were, on less than spectacular performance from preceding batches, whose majorly uninspiring antics galvanized the blase coordinator to lambast we unsuspecting few with a preemptive "scolding", as he put it, of our future misdemeanors, taking out his frustrations on us. I don't fancy mentors that don't want my untrained faculties poking into his research. Much less being watched with eagle-eyes by a cynical, jaded authority.

There is that enduring problem of EE and my inability to decide on what I want or can do. Posthumanism? Political, social, ethical, stylistic considerations? Subbranches of posthumanist literature? Case-studies? Dune? How shall I structure the EE? How shall I talk about the enduring themes of mere fiction? (Note the irony.)

Then there are the holidays. Which are ending. A puerile consideration, perhaps, but irritating nonetheless.

***

I'm reading Ilium by Dan Simmons, which worries me because nowhere on this good Earth have I yet seen the sequel Olympos. Ilium is a strange book built on strange premises - that of Homer's Iliad being performed by hapless pawns on Mars, of sentient machine-cyborg beings no doubt inspired from Dyson's astrochicken, that for once copy human linguistic patterns and swear liberally, of postliteral humans trapped in an Eloi-like state of society, ignorant of even te most elementary things. Ilium is engaging because of its sheer novelty and complexity, and for now, although I haven't finished, it has already offered several fascinating thinking points.

Totality

2006-03-14T14:29:00.000+08:00

Walking in the whispering wood
Past the fallen leaves
A boundless mist upon the mood
Settles unbereaved

Brushing past the moonlit trees
I came upon a clearing
And then I sank upon my knees
Filled with awful yearning

For dancing stars above the night
And vasty spirits beyond my sight
And knowledge, for which no man knows
But yet strives still, long and slow.

Web

2006-03-04T10:47:00.000+08:00

It is interesting how music can have such a profound effect upon memory. The sounds spin webs in your mind and it isn't easy to disassociate them from impressions once they have settled into your brain.

I myself have not been immune to this, although I would hardly call it a liability. It just gives music an added poignancy, you know? Music is not just a collection of sounds that are pleasing to the ear. It has a capacity to subconsciously foster order where there is none. Music is a stimulus for action. It galvanizes powerful emotional reactions. For that reason it is very much a testament to the emotive power of the mind.

I tend to associate songs with times, or even with books and other forms of media. In end 2004 my mind was inundated with Vertigo by U2 as a result of overexposure to iPod ads. I vaguely remember a dash of LOTR music in the mix as well. Early 2005 is indelibly associated with KOTOR. As a result KOTOR music was impressed upon my consciousness. Angel by Gavin Friday and Prince of Egypt (more notably Humanity and When You Believe) , which I acquired after March 1, were powerful evocative symphonies, not least because of Lurhmann's Romeo + Juliet. As the OM drudge began to set in I start to associate this period with extreme Revenge of the Sith mania, culminating in obsessive partaking of Blue (Da Ba Dee) and the Phantom theme from Schumacher's 2004 movie, as well as I Shot the Sheriff and far too much Enya for good measure. After the end of OM I return to what seems a blank time - June 2005, which is quite empty for some reason. I think, though, that I was listening to I, Robot at the time, as well as snatches of the Beatles heard from Mediacorp Gold 90.5. Before June I was also listening to The Dream Within, sung by Laura Fabian, from the Spirits Within.

July came and with it a powerful dose of Heaven and quite a bit of Euro-techno music like Fairy on the Lake. I like to think of this period as the photoshop period. Following the IB Symposium I was also caught up in weebls-stuff, lots of Matrix parody flash, clay animation videos, and the Matrix music. Neodammerung and Navras from The Matrix Revolutions in early July and August, the whole deluge of Romeo + Juliet music in August, around the cross-country, especially Lovefool by the Cardigans. Additionally, nascent Potter mania influenced my music tastes in John William's music from the Harry Potter movies. After this, I started to try drawing faces, which led to Hey Jude by the Beatles and Little Star in the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack, as well as Mandy Moore, notably I Wanna be With You.

With exams comes a curiously null period again, although the Little Star period lasted till late September. When the exams finished Hayley Westenra came into the scene, with My Heart Belongs to You, whereupon I began to listen to Odyssey and Mariah Carey for the rest of the month. In work attachment I have a powerful impression of Vision of Love and i dont wanna cry by Carey as well as pseudo-operatic ballads sung by Hayley Westenra, like Dark Waltz and Dell'amore non si sa. I continued listening to Hayley Westenra, eventually diverting to more mainstream music such as Never Saw Blue and I Say Grace. After this came a portion of the FFAV soundtrack, like Water, and more Carey, and Everlasting Love by Jamie Cullum. When I went to Europe I discovered Michael Buble on the bus, and was amused by Quando, quando and Nelly Furtado, as well as Home, and Have a Little Faith in Me by Mandy Moore. Afterward it was Narnia. After Orientation I became enamoured with Michelle Branch, Josh Groban and Geisha. Then Pure and right now, After the Love Has Gone.

Some books also have strong associations with music. The Ender series with several intermeshing melodies that I can't remember. KOTOR with Humanity and Angel, Harry Potter with Harry Potter music, Narnia with Narnia, and others. Music is truly a unique human impulse. Like other types of art it deals with the raw impulse of the human spirit, that primality inherent in humans. Music merely refines it into recognizable constructs while preserving the pure emotive force.

A Whimsical Tale

2006-02-24T15:31:00.000+08:00

So I was hanging out at my ranch in North County. The place swarms with bears and other critters. But I don't hunt 'em. I hunt trees because I'm a vegetarian. So one day I'm hanging out at the ranch, and out comes the sheriff of the county. He says to my face, "Ehhh, cello,", and I'm like "What?" Sheriff's a right nice guy, I mean, he's old and all, and his leather strip has met the hides of a thousand philandering horsethieves. He has these long white moustachios that hang to his knees a gold earring in his ear. He has a Colt 9 that's older than his grandaddy and that's saying a lot.

So he walks up to me, boots a-clinkin', and says "cello". "Sheriff," I say, "you're drunk." He starts to mutter under his breath. So I grab his arms and walk him to the edge of the wood. "Sheriff," I say, "You gotta get back. Sundance is out again." So he says, "What?" and grabs onto his moustachios. He runs a circle in this position with his Colt banging against the holster and it drops out. Serious. The leather just gives way. So he picks it up. An' he says, "Your time is over and you're gonna die bloody, and all you can do is choose where," he actually screams it at the top of his Sheriff's Voice and it echoes off the mountains.

Then he shoots me.

So I'm in hospital, wishing I'd kept my mouth shut. The sheriff shot me. Then the deputy had to shoot him. In the foot. So after some days I decide to write a song about it. But it won't be what really happened, of course.

Two weeks later, would you believe it, I got shot again. This time it was by another old coot who told me he was goin' hunting them critters in the forest. Apparently he thought I was a bird. The geezer says his name is Dick. He also seems to think he's famous. And he loves pretzels.

Stars in the Heavens

2006-02-16T21:42:00.000+08:00

Listening to the Contact soundtrack brings back many memories of the movie. Contact is one of the most deeply moving films I have had the fortune to watch. It is cinematic perfection from start to finish, exquisitely and lovingly crafted by masters, portraying a world so painfully beautiful and magnificent and compelling that reality seems a cruel wound in comparison. If humanity could one day conceivably embark on such a magnificent journey to adulthood, it would start from a point not unlike the one in Contact - that of childlike wonderment and a sense of humility against the backdrop of the undying universe above.

The Universe is a many-splendoured thing. We have always derived comfort and wonder from the cosmic movements of the stars. No human being can observe a starry sky and wonder at his own place in the universe. There is no beauty as pure or as magnificent. It is a cosmic dance that is still going on, infinitely complex, unutterably, breathtakingly old. Such beauty, I am sure, appeals to the very essence of what it means to be human, of what it means to know, not the mere stuff of the body, but the transcendent state of the mind.

Inversion

2006-02-12T22:32:00.000+08:00

A new micromeme has emerged from the primordial slush. You'd probably know this if you were online sometime during the afternoon and evening of Sunday the 12th of February. No sooner than I logged on when I was buffeted with requests from no less than 4 people begging for my input. I complied. I got sucked in. Preamble gets irritating after a while. Thus do we present links.

The Arbiter

Nova

Toitle

Dark Consume Me

2006-02-10T17:22:00.000+08:00

I feel terrible. The weight of responsibility and visions of a troubled road ahead plague my dreams and torment me in my waking moments. The alienation and utter, utter disorientation hasn't left me. I am in a depressive cycle, and, compounded by troubles that arise out of cruel circumstance, I feel wretched.

The O Level release is humbling. As an outsider, seeing the agonies and the stress of waiting, I feel myself succumbing to the ceaseless pressures of their permeating anxiety. Their apprehension fills me and drives me to distraction. Perhaps irrationally, I almost feel inadequate. Guilty. Left out, of joys and sorrows, triumph and defeat. Watching the joy of Joshua and Soon Kai upon discovering they had passed, I felt a desire to join in. But I can claim no similar triumph. When Kevin came in with news of his results, I felt uncomfortable. I didn't know what to say.

The others are easier to take. A's and B's pile and news comes, but I do not get mine, even though, in my unconscious, I may reach out for it. It's like standing on the edge of a precipice, waiting for the fall that never comes, stepping forth into the infinite gaping chasm and finding oneself safely afoot on terra firma, that sense of unfulfilled expectation and unspent adrenaline, the knowledge of reason that somehow never quite subsumes the irrationality of emotion.

***

I am reading Ringworld by Larry Niven. The book doesn't satisfy. It is an adventure built upon a scientific concept that never quite manages to achieve real-world resonance. It's filled with glaring inconsistencies and irritating dialogue. There is an overemphasis on sex for its own sake. Although it is built upon sound scientific principles Ringworld doesn't fulfill its early promise. It lapses into a repititive set of action sequences interspersed with Dune-like philosophical inquiries and inconsequential plottwists that sound unbelievable. It uses some rather tired motifs in science fiction like the alien girl as representative of divergent humanity and explorer-as-god, although this is forgivable given the period the book was written in. The most interesting thing in the book is, of course, the Ringworld itself. It is a compromise between a Dyson Sphere and a planet and is three million times the surface area of Earth. It is a vast sci-fi playground filled with many possibilities. Pity the book doesn't capitalize on the enormous promise of this construct. In its defense though I must say the aliens are among the most original and unique I have seen. It will be interesting to see how Ringworld ties up the plot and reaches a conclusion. Perhaps my opinion will change in future, but it remains thus while I continue reading this Hugo- and Nebula- award-winning work.

Danes and Religion

2006-02-06T20:40:00.000+08:00

There's something to be said about freedom of expression. It might be serve as a check on authority. It may disseminate ideas and fashions. But as with all the nascent tools of humanity there is a limit to its application. We in Singapore set the limit too low. In Denmark and the utopian nations of Scandinavia, that limit requires some revision. Not to say that flag-burning and arson is justified as a backlash against a cartoon that is, after all, the brainchild of not more than the minutest representative of the Danish population, but freedom of anything is a dangerous thing. Unchecked, it can lead to chaos and disaster, abstractions that are all too chillingly real - and which have uncanny parallels to the ways in which fashions and modes of thought percolate, often among the very same channels.

***

Islam has often been labelled intolerant. True, insofar as it goes, but all religions share some measure of this unfortunate attribute; it is, after all, the imperative of their existence. Religions are coloured by their cultures of origin, of the early proponents of its doctrine. Islam's ideology is not dissimilar to pre-Lutheran Christianity, where the Church dominated a Europe steeped in religious inflexibility. This was the world where witches were burnt at the stake for the slightest transgression and scholars were persecuted for beliefs that did not conform with the views of the Church. The Islamic world, while considerably more mature and humane than the Christianity of that era, perhaps needs time before it can shed its image, no doubt aided by the inimical activities of self-styled jihadi terrorists. Like all religions, it often resides before the present, a symbol of antiquity predating the silicon world of the modern age. Unlike Christianity, much of whose influence has percolated with the Imperial winds of British domination, Islam has had less of a chance to expose itself to the world at large. And thus misconceptions have been formed with regards to it, misconceptions, that when dispelled reveal a religion perhaps having the potential to be as powerful and influential as Christianity itself.

The Old

2006-01-31T21:50:00.000+08:00

I have just finished The Chronicles of Narnia, which proves once again that to deny the truth of majority opinion where literature is concerned is ultimately fallacious (disregarding your opinions of the raw quality of the given material.). Narnia is ultimately a surprising tour de force, a true fantasist masterpiece in the style of a children's fairy tale.

Narnia, is, of course, a piece of Christian literature, not so much a pure allegory as an exploration of an alternative moral reality. Lewis, the self-proclaimed reluctant convert, infuses his personal philosophies into the narrative, weaving the entire story - from the birth of Narnia to its ultimate destruction - and transcendence into a heavenlike paradise - into something so ultimately compelling to the penetrating reader (in this case myself, because I don't treat the story like the children's fairytale it ought to come across as) that it speaks to the depths of the soul. A Christian allegory, no less, but this time much easier to accept because it clothes the Christian message into something ultimately secular and independent of its original Christian trappings. (Not saying that the Christian message is bad, just that Narnia does not attempt to proselytize.) It's almost as if the book considers morality not the reserve of Christians, but of everybody that ever mattered.

The Chronicles of Narnia is a simple, pure, beautiful, elegant and childlike tale of wonderment. Its utter simplicity is a precious gem in the world of dark, gritty fiction like God of Small Things and other gothic travesties. The abundance of deus ex machinas is not just indicative of its messianic bias and the Christian promise, but also of a world bereft of the caprice of the author's vengeance. It is a comforting world of stunning beauty that speaks to the inner child of the most distant reader. It transcends its position as Christian apologist fiction and takes its place in the forefront of children's literature, that lives forever unsullied in our minds long after the adult world embraces us. It has the most important quality any work of escapist literature could ever want to achieve: It gives us an unbearable yearning to be in that world, to experience its grandeur and sadness, to bask in the radiance of suns that never shone and never will, save in our hearts.

***

Chinese New Year is a time of joy and celebration. It is a time where we can cast off troubles and let the festive mood seep into us. This year is different, though. It is as though a wind came in the early morning and blew the spring leaves away, leaving bare branches reminiscent of cold winter.

It is a sense of emptiness that pervades, a sense of being cut loose in a boundless ocean with no anchor. The inexorable changes that come with our transition into IB life, as the end of our teenage lives draws cever closer - that all the comforting things of our childhood would disappear, that bleak adulthood and then old age would come, and with it all the cruelty of a world sunk in strife.

It is as though things have lost their importance, and schemes unravel beyond the limits of our understanding, and the world shifts hither.

Change. The inscrutable.

If only it snowed here. If only clear liquid azure blue shone here every morning, and pastel hues of gold in the evening, and beech and blossoms bloomed in a lawn that doesn't exist, shading a path into a windswept plain.

That's Narnia for you.

***

Interview

2006-01-24T20:06:00.000+08:00

It is not often that one gets to meet a de savant. In the United Confederation one does not see many around anymore. They have been rounded in, so to speak. And it is perhaps thanks to them that I have had the privilege to meet one.

He lives in the Round Square off Westside in New City 004B. So it was necessary to board the Train and cross the Continents to reach him. In the train I confess to a certain ambivalence; quite like that which one feels upon meeting a jaguar in the Old Wild. Of course, that is prohibited now. I wore the City 015R workclothes, which felt very anomalous because nothing in the guidelines pointed me to an appropriate choice of wear to a semi-informal (C-13) interview with a P-tag. But I am going off on a tangent. I shiver at the strange surroundings. It is not often that Urbiners have an oppurtunity to cross cities; their jobs do not let them. But mine does. And so anomaly comes to anomaly.

It is novel and disturbing to have the resources to open G-Doors and access M-lockets. So thus did I venture off to Round Square in halfwear, thoughtfully provided by the City authorities. The squalor around me is distressing and I fight the urge to call for the Bureau. In any of the Confed sanctums such a digression would have led to serious consequences for those responsible. But the Round Square lies outside Confed jurisdiction.

So I enter. The poor denizens stare with hostility, wretches that they are. I feel a pang of pity at their Unmodified physiques and weak immunity. I think, surely the Savant will not be like this, living here as it is. But doubt creeps in and I long for the PH holo.

His apartments are spare and irregularly shaped, with odd angles at every glance. He sits there, smiling serenely. The P-tag dangles from his neck. I rarely see a P-tag smile. It is against the decree, of course, not to assume a neutral expression at best. But rarely do they smile. Even a P-tag, though, living in the Outdoors - is an anomaly.

His name is Havek Lir Sador.

And I have to admit, I do not think he is resentful.

He welcomes me with a smile. I sit on the cleanest spot in his room and marvel at the waste, the spaciousness of individual purpose rooms. "Charmed," he says. The son of a Senior Adjucator before his exile he has had proper instruction in UniSpeak. Yet his accents are strange and tone of voice novel.

I greet him in accordance with Unispeak Proprietary Law 3.

His face twists as if in discomfort, and his smile slips. I plunge into the interview. At first he is stiff and unsure, but he warms to the questions as if tackling an opponent in Uniwrestle. I ask him on his emotional responses with regard to his seclusion, a necessary query based on Journalism Law 7B-2. "I felt very human at first," he says, smiling. "Resentment. Anger, definitely. Rage. Depression." I stare in shock at the impropriety. And then he goes on to issue another, greater shock. "But the feelings, they fade. Now I am glad that I no longer am a part of the UniCon. I feel...content. And that is also human."

"I wonder why we humans have to build arbitrary laws for ourselves. Customs that have no basis in reality. It is a cage to trap us, a prison of bars clustered too close for light to seep through." Sador pauses and takes a breath. I reply, "The UniCon provides us with the perfect balance, neither too close or too lax. If they did not, anarchy would follow."

And Sador retorts, "Whither you stand?"

And after a pause, he continues. "All the universe is may be construed to an arbitrary set of laws whose randomness is to massive for us to perceive. To us there is order in chaos, meaning in nothingness." Sador leans back. "But the UniCon gives us purpose and function: to serve in the UniCon for the betterment of humanity!" My sensibilities are disturbed, now.

And Sador says, "That is why we create meaning for ourselves; to live without meaning is to live without life. But the human is often too weak to envisage his own fulfillment."

"That is why there is culture. That is why there is belief."

"The UniCon has transcended culture and belief and united the nations together for the betterment of humanity!" That Sador cannot see this is truly astounding. I see now why he is a savant.

"But we must find strength within ourselves to make our own lives in the embrace of our sociological reality," Sador continues, unpreturbed. "And only like this may we weave our own unknowable destiny. A destiny in the stars."

The stars?

But the stars are hidden and dead, and the light that shines is that which deceives.

Soon, I leave. It is too much, enduring the contrariness of his opinion and the grubbiness of his abode, spacious as it is. I return to my City. I disinfect myself in the Communal Bathing Facilities. I sit and type this.

But I wonder, as well.

A Chance Encounter

2006-01-14T10:55:00.000+08:00

A dark alley worthless to thugs, and filthy. Sheer unbroken walls stand to either side, a green garbage bin at the sides curiously empty, ironically surrounded by mounds of filth - what you'd normally expect; fish bones and a fair number of crushed Coke cans and the occasional dead rat and one cat.

A man walks through the alley. He is either woefully ignorant of the inhibitions any right-minded member of the American civilization would have since he was three, or woefully heedless, inspired by a confidence no doubt stemming from things hidden in the depths of his voluminous cloak. In fact, he is a curious combination of both and resembles a monster in bandages and a bowler hat, seemingly out of phase with the fashion trends of the rest of the world. At least part of the reason for this is that he is in fact a monster hidden in bandages and a bowler hat, seemingly out of phase with the fashion trends of the rest of the world. Or at least that is the description anyone with a prosaic disposition would describe him as, which indicates everyone but Ridley Scott and a few madmen in institutions somewhere or other. And he isn't just out of phase, his incipient mental dictionary holds no definition whatsoever of the word fashion, in any case.

In fact, as he cheerfully describes in his petabytic diary (a curious affectation adopted from the denizens of this otherwise appallingly primitive rock), he may be described in the parlance of this joint as an alien, which he hastens to add, is not an illegal immigrant from Ecuador or Mexico, but, rather, an unknown entity from the vicinity of M18, and would set off most metal detectors in any case given the large amounts of base metals in his biochemistry.

Today he has a rendezvous, however. Tonight, rather, he thinks, and a hundred volts course through his various pouches as intricate recording devices encrypt his very thoughts on his customized watch, which he holds up to his abdominal regions to perceive the time. Late, he thinks, and another hundred volts - no, we shall not go into this again.

Behind him a matte black Mercedes pulls over, engines silent as the moon. The odd thought courses a hundred volts - no. His moon was not silent, and had not been for several thousand years, filled with gas-bars and strip-joints as it was. No. Anyway, the matte black Mercedes pulls over. Two men emerge, dressed in black suits, black shoes, black gloves, a black tie, black sunglasses, black wigs and black teeth - no, that is just a joke, he had had to undergo five years of training before he understood the point of jokes - and, defying the cookie-cutter mould, black shirts, with little black buttons down the sides and a tiny little black pocket with a tiny little black pen. Behind these two men the doors of the Mercedes slid shut like silk.

"This is a chance encounter," the first man said. He was short and had a shock of hair that glistened in the moonlight.
"This is a chance encounter," the other man said. He was tall and he was also black. His hair did not glisten in the light.

The alien sighs, fingering its megaton energy dissipator with a free tendril. It suppresses the urge to emanate a brief puff of pheremones in consternation - it was a neurotoxin to humans and he did not really wish to kill humans, did he? And begin another war that would surely cause another embargo of wormstock for the breeding grounds? In any case he rather liked the planet, primitive backwater as it was.

"This is a chance encounter," it admits wearily.
"Down to business, then, xenoc," the second man says briskly. "One, what are you doing out here without a permit? Two, where did you get that cloak? It's contraband, you know. Third, you're going to cause a leak incident the way you dress. You look like a Victorian on crack. You know how many people we had to process for you? Who sent you here an-"

"That's the fourth point, agent Jones," the other man expostulates.

Much to the alien's surprise, the second man reddens in chagrin. "Yes. My mistake. Fourth point. Fourth point, xenoc." He is louder now, like a Adjucator on carboxyls. "Who sent you here?" He clears his throat, and resumes importantly. "Remember that we are authorized agents of the Galactic Assembly and failure to comply will result in dire consequences for your seat on the Council. We know you're here on your government's espousal, and your-"

"Jones."
"Wait, Kane. Your-"
"Jones."
The other man whirls around. "What, Kane? Look, you gotta give me some space here-"
"Article 857." The alien is visibly impressed, and he suppresses another urge to inject more lethal neurotoxins into the air. Kane is a formidable entity, with style.

"But, Kane-"
The alien nods, a curiously human gesture. Article 857, the interstellar statute on state secrets. Which can only mean the young Jones is way over his head.

At length Jones desists. He turns his scowl towards the alien, who suppresses another urge to jiggle his pheremone sacs. "As it turns out, I do have a permit," the alien eventually says. "But not one recognized by your scanners. It exists in the compactified dimensionalities, and is in fact a Chalabi-Yau space with certain attributes. I dare not extract it for fear that it might obliterate your solar system. You do understand, don't you?" He waits expectantly and watches them scramble for cover.

"Fine," the second man stammers. "But that proves nothing." The alien sighs. Nature provided well for his species's case, endowing them with 26 appendages, 10 of which had manipulator suckles. This inclination for base 26 had proved useful in the development of their own GUT, a feat the humans were nowhere near completing. But Article 45...unbelievable as it might have seemed, the Assembly had agreed to pass the Amendment for Article 45 after watching a couple of Star Trek episodes. It was sad how these humans suffered such cruel ironies. As it was the alien's civilization remained far above human civilization, except for certain individuals in the embassy.

"This cloak is not contraband by virtue of the fact that my government authorized it," he says. "In an interdimensional civilization such as ours it is all but inevitable. Necessary, even," he finishes, casting a discreet eye on the puny pockets of the humans. "How do you store anything in those pockets, anyway? That's something I never quite understood," he ventures hopefully.

The humans do not take the cue. Eventually Kane steps in and the alien feels a tingle of excitement. "And the leak factor potentialities?" he questions, voice dry and cool as a flux-storm in his home dominion.

For once the alien has no easy answer. He admits to himself, liberating more than a hundred volts in the process, that he had indeed been rather careless. But squeezing a eight foot form into a six-foot cast is no easy thing, even for interdimensional civilizations. "I like to think of it as disguise through flamboyance," it says slyly. Kane's mouth twists into a vexed smile. Jones sputters. "Who dresses up all in black, anyway? What do you pass yourselves off as? Musicians?" Kane's smile disappears, and he mutters something about too many movies. Jones shoots him an accusing glare. It really would have to look up the meaning of fashion one day.

"That doesn't excuse your carelessness," Kane says frigidly. The alien waves a tentacle dismissively. "Oh, we don't come here to quibble." He inhales. "It's not even illegal. Go on," and assumes an expectant posture.

Jone looks apoplectic. Red-faced, he storms in like a bull in an amorphous dark-matter construct retailer. "Who sent you here, xenoc?" he rages. "You do know all forms of espionage, telephatic or otherwise, is punishable by embargo, don't you?" The alien shudders. Embargoes are the primary motive force of the Assembly, which replaced the billion-strong armies it utilized before the Great Commerce Revolution.

Slowly, the alien loosens up his organ sacs, ready for the coup de grace. "Why," it says sultrily, "I got the very idea after watching one of your Star Trek episodes. Very interesting, really, and it doesn't break a single law. Not even yours, humans. I'm a tourist," he declares, and settles back to watch as all hell, indubitably and finally, breaks loose.

***

Puissance du Côté en Noir

2006-01-13T16:45:00.000+08:00

(Yes, yes, the title is straight from Babelfish.)

Far from lucidity, his thoughts roam down dark paths well-grooved. Diminutive, he rises, cloak silent fabric on cold metal underfoot, and fingers the dangerous silver rod at his side.

Abandoned of the light, Darth Malak, purveyor of destruction! He was power incarnate, and the weak fools he had left behind be damned to the depths of the Force! I sold my soul to the Dark Side on the behest of him whom I betrayed. And he felt the righteous power of his satisfaction. Conscience no longer held any particular meaning for him. Conscience was a form of weakness, to be purged. He had been reborn, a blade tempered in blood of a billion slaves of his Empire. Only fools spared those who were naked to their power. THe one he had betrayed was one of those fools. And for that he had died, when Malak judged himself the stronger.

They had restrained him, blind to his potential! They had limited him, in the knowledge of their inferiority! His old self, that meek self, the soul that he had been had been erased in fires of destruction. No longer the humble, accepting cretin of the past, but scion of the future he held in his fist. For now, he was pledged to the Dark Side!

For his chemicals roam the neural pathways of them! The sacred molecule of his partaking, his tool to crush all opposition! For he forces them to work for his Empire, forging new monoliths for his blood hunger! And such is their labour, for they lack sleep and are driven on by the terrible fluids he forces down their throats to keep their muscles moving, their labours unending, their end torment! Bitter is his tool, and the deceptive trails of fragrance a trap for the ignorant and the unwary.

No longer need he rave at the injudicious use of his true name! For the weak fools addressed him now thus, in his power and splendor. He had forced it down their throats, mocking their stupidity. Malak! Malak! Malak! How he had grated at hearing the wrongness! And now, he had taken his revenge!

Applying himself in full study of the dark arts, he rises! All the world will tremble at his nova of power! Soon, he will be the most terrible Dark Lord of the Sith Earth has ever seen!

The Elements

2006-01-11T21:28:00.000+08:00

The Elements are in disarray. For the past few days it has rained and been gloomy from start to finish. The blue day remains beyond the sheer, impenetrable veil of thinly clustered clouds. Think the Matrix but milder.

A bolt of lightning heralds a crescendo of thunder. I wonder how the Sec 4s are doing in Kluang. When we went the weather was pleasantly cool and the wind was heavenly. Perhaps they will not be so fortunate. Perhaps they will. I note from the blogs of a few of them that they do not appreciate this venture one bit. Neither did I, but I was pleasantly surprised. Kluang was the high point of outdoorsy life. Perhaps their reasons differ, for I am not of the religious persuasion. But then circumstances dictate action, more so than vice-versa. Change time, change democracy and the greater consensus, or change yourself. Action is, understandably, easier.

I wish Singapore were colder and windier. Tropical weather I despise, with its static, unchanging balmy humidity and stifling, sticky post-rain depression. I wish we had Australian weather, with the offshore winds and beautiful blue skies with their golden sunsets. With the pleasant cool climate and appropriately wet weather. Or perhaps subzero Chicago, with similar blue skies and bone-chilling winds that give the Windy City its reputation.

I have outlined a nominal plan to achieve my personal ends.

Plan A (Da Plan)

Firstly, we shall have to devise a method to tilt the rotational axis of the Earth, or alternatively, to accelerate continental shift so that Singapore may be moved several degrees up latitude, although I see no way to accomplish this. Asteroidal impacts are out of the question; they cause too much destruction. I suggest something similar; the use of a large planetary body of a mass similar to that of Earth's to alter its orientation.

There are several complications to be addressed.

1. Inevitable collateral fallout.
2. The alteration of climates dictates the inevitable mass displacement of biota.
3. Tourist destinations must be radically altered.
4. George W Bush must find a way to address the US budget deficit.
5. Suitable planetary body of appropriate size must be found.
6. Cimates will be far more variable, given the greater axial tilt, thus requiring massive bioengineering works on existent biota.
7. This one is way out on the left field, but I shall address it nonetheless. Such an action may cause nearby space aliens, aka extraterrestrial entities, to take notice of our civilization, leading to a number of possible consequences ranging fro our entry into a form of intergalactic confederation or the utter annihilation of our species a la Independence Day.
8. New branches of supramathematics will have to be invented to predict and plan the intriacate orbital paths of said planetary body in order to most accuarately alter the axial tilt to appropriate levels.
9. A branch of NASA will have to convene. Names will probably range from EATAC (Earth Axial Tilt Alteration Committee) to USGANASACIAEATTMAL (US Govt. NASA Committee for the Inevitable Alteration of the Earth's Axial Tilt To More Managable Levels).
10. The extermination of the elephant and associated lifeforms.
11. Martin Scorese/Steven Spielberg will probably have to do inspirational autobiographical flicks on the life of the noble NASA engineer in charge of everything.

After everything a Committee for the Salvation of Terrestrial Life (COSTEL) will have to convene to solve the constituent problems which may include (in no particular order of severity):

1. Climate fall-out.
2. Anomalous geological activity, eg multiple volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, splitting of the crust, massive flooding, gravitational stress on cities etc.
3. Altered conditions for the survival of the ecosphere.
4. Mass hysteria and panicking.
5. Greedy insurance agents on the side.
6. Possible intervention of Bill Gates and extraterrestrial lifeforms.
7. The delay in the release of the XBox and dual-core systems in Powerbooks.
8. North Korea.

The goals of this particular undertaking include the shifting of Singapore into a temperate climate zone, which will grant us relative cool or utter dangerous cold, depending on the extent of the tilt.

Plan B

Migrate. Not viable because I don't intend to.

Plan C

Grit teeth and endure it. Suggested to be optimal solution involving negligible costs.

Evidently I am in a fair mood to-day. The above is meant to be self-deprecation.

If wishes were wings pigs could fly.

Orientation

2006-01-05T20:49:00.000+08:00

I feel spent. Orientation week is as unenjoyable as anything. I get a very human urge to blame it on the committee, but it's not entirely their fault. Could do with less of that mud, though. Otherwise, they coordinated everything well, put their best into making this week proceed as smoothly as possible, and their planning was mostly impeccable.

Such camps are invariably a hard time for me. I am naturally quiet and hardly very gregarious. I very much prefer to find my own footing with others gradually. I'd rather circumstances dictate relationships, rather than the opposite. When tasked to interact in a forward fashion I'd naturally feel as if the ship I was standing on disappeared beneath me. I wouldn't know what to say, what to do. I lack the ability to conform to other people's interests, or to ask questions just for the sake of asking them. Girls are a further complication, for my experience with dealing with their kind is rather limited. As a result I can only mix with certain people in my group, people whose social presence I don't get intimidated by, people whom I won't think are eyeing my every move, waiting for any mistake, any gaffe they can pounce on and eviscerate. And even then I wouldn't know what to say. Neutral questions about background and feelings? I can hardly say them with any sincerity on my part. Football? Couldn't be less interested. Teacher gossip? I'm contented to listen, never venturing anything in return. Jokes? I daresay I have a few in stock, but I daren't tell them in front of people I don't know well. Books? I've endured enough flak over my supposed bookishness to demur. I remember Sec 1 very well. It was a supremely embarrassing time, because I had lack of sense enough to go around asking people about Kardeshev's scale of technological achievement.

As Kangxi would say, I've revealed a small part of my entrails. Back to discussing orientation.

It's an uncertain time. My sense of retreat hasn't dissipated entirely and with all these new people I feel rather aloof. I can hardly believe that I now technically belong to a JC level of education, injected back into the mainstream society, made to relearn social conventions once more. I drift in a lonely sea. Orientation hasn't achieved its goal for me. I would have appreciated it more if we had simply been thrust into lessons. That, at least, is an arena in which I can feel equipped to handle whatever comes. This four-day span of activities smacks of UYO camps and artificially-conceived icebreaking endeavours, that particular strain of camps which I appreciate the least.

I realize, though, that the orientation isn't meant for us, it's meant for the newcomers. It's meant to give them an emotional sense of attachment to their new surroundings, to establish the realities of their newfound allegiances and cast away old ones. I cannot complain about orientation. I cannot technically wish we were thrust straight into lessons. But I think orientation stinks. Not blaming the OC, mind. If there is something to blame, blame it on my tastes. And on the rain, which I despise. Which brings up another point where the OC failed - wet weather contingencies. The soya bean drinking was rather outrageous. There was a real risk of food poisoning. The packs of soya beans and the buckets themselves, not to mention the straws, placed carelessly on top of open sewers - if anything untoward happened, we know what to blame it on. Some rather ill-conceived activities - that pointless clowning around at Marina Bay, the limes game at the Esplanade, the outrageous and scandalous things David was forced to do as forfeit - proposing to random girls in the street, singing loudly to random passersby - rather in bad taste.

At the end of the day, the end is truly what one looks forward to. And if that doesn't sound correctly optimistic, at least it's honest.

Narnia

2005-12-29T17:09:00.000+08:00

Narnia is a beauty, a cinematic feature of the rarest kind - that is to say, an adaptation that expands and develops the plot beyond the source material to create a story and world far more resonant and endearing to the viewer. Peter Jackson tried to do that with the Lord of the Rings; unfortunately, the best he could do was a stirring rendition that stretched the limits of excellent filmmaking - but not that of storytelling or world-building.

Of course, you could always argue Narnia was much easier to adapt; the length of the book and the relatively simplistic themes it encapsulates are far easier to adapt than Tolkien's monstrous epic - that does not change the fact that was a good movie. It could even be said the movie was better than the book, like Orson Scott Card claims. Despite this, although LOTR is still the greater achievement, Narnia stands no smaller because of it. Adamson deserves kudos for what he has managed to accomplish in this movie.

Lewi's opus was first and foremost meant to be an allegory. Not only that, a children's tale, with all the embellishments you'd expect of one - the conservative stereotypes, the anthropomorphization of animals, the happy endings and the lot. This means Lewi's story may fall short in terms of sheer entertainment value, at least to adults. The movie lends a graver, more serious air of tension and conflict. It no longer feels like a children's movie. Makes commercial sense; or some other pseudo-cynical excuse, but there's that.

I thought the children's acting was good - on par, at least, with that other big budget children's movie franchise, Harry Potter. I won't go into detail here. I thought Tilda Swinton (the White Witch) could have injected more subtlety into her ice-queen villian role. And somehow, though, the image of a straw-clad amazon riding on a sleigh pulled by polar bears, clutching a dagger isn't very intimidating. Fortunately the grim impact of that particular scene is mantained by the devilish orc-analogues trudging along.

Adamson has a talent for depicting battles. His directing ability is good; the cinematography excellent. It never seems like a children's movie; the narrative is depicted almost through an adult's perspective, as though one were peering through glass to witness a world that encapsulates every conception of the nursery rhymes or comforting bedtime stories of early life. One depicted in lush detail and more than a little surprising realism.

The plot remains the same as it ever was. Aslan's reincarnation, though very fittingly theologically sound, is rather kitschy and contrived - but it's handled as well as it could have been in the movie, although rather abruptly. Other than that the movie stays faithful to the book to a surprisingly large degree, although perhaps less so given the brevity of the original book.

Music was excellent. Gregson's score beats John William's latest efforts hands down. Its etheral themes and resounding cadences lend a magical quality to the world of Narnia. Without the music Narnia would be much less powerful than it is.

Weakest point was the plot, of course, but that can't be helped. And the plot is at least decent and sufficiently believable to pass off. The heartwarming finale and poignant capstone shrug off the preceding contrivance and brings the magic to the pinnacle. Never has my innate cynicism been more frowned upon. Though I wouldn't call myself a cynic. And cynicism in moderation is not always a bad thing. Science is the study of skepticism, after all. Political studies even more. The "best" books are always cynical, though; the so-called literati fall upon themselves and squeal delightedly at the "raw worldliness" and "mature realism" these tomes invariably contain to nausea, so much so that the virtue of innocence has been forgotten in literary canon. Sometimes I think that all non-cynical books are clamped indiscriminately into the children's genre. That's why Toynbee lambasted LOTR, and Harry Potter is regarded as children's reading material (although it is; I would rather classify it as teenager-centric reading material).

Well, in any case, I found Narnia more...satisfying than Kong. If faced with a choice of purchasing either DVD I would choose Narnia with only slight hesitation.

New Year is coming. The most depressing holiday of the year, for obvious reasons. Sometimes I wish we could adopt the British system and start our terms at September. That would be a nice change. And the weather, too.

Postcolonial Hangover

2005-12-25T23:58:00.000+08:00

While Karan's been traipsing in India (for lack of a better term), I've been at Club Med (Bintan), in the course of which I met some really cool Taiwanese. See, this is all the more interesting because not only do I hail from, uh, a tiny piece of mucus *shakes fist angrily at chen shui bian*, I am also comprised of mucus in my entirety, a.k.a, a mucus sac *shakes fist angrily at the Arbiter*. Except the cranial regions, which are apparently forged of the finest candy (four candy cane shards craft one candy cane brain! Haha Guildwars!), and of course, the quintessential ingredient, turtle droppings. Yep. *shakes fist angrily at uh..yeah.*

So, anyway, these people speak unsullied chinese of the first degree, which would put the most "chinky" among us to shame, most probably including the scholars. Which is no surprise at all, since it is, after all their primary language. What really tickles my tiny mucus-tendrils this time is that, contrary to what Russell Peters would have us believe, their "Thirty Five Fifty's!" are enuncianted in flawless english with an impeccable American accent. Perfectly, and with a crazy vocabulary to boot. Yes, there was a guy called Anthony among them, and no, they didnt pronounce his name in that "EH-PUH! (apple) CAN-DEE!(candy)" cantonese accent we so love.

Well yeah granted, they are, after all, from Xsin Chu American school. This, however, also means that they dont even TAKE chinese in school! Which led to a couple of them claiming that their Chinese "really really sucked". Painful, for me. Oh, did i mention they also spoke fluent french? (Uh. thinks of excuse). Oh God.

Also, turns out we have something really similar to them! See, this is me learning something new and getting GGed (uh, Good Gamed!) by my sister again.

Me: "Hey, do you guys speak dialect?"

Taiwanese guy: "Uh, a little taiwanese."

Me:"Oo, taiwanese."

Taiwanese guy: "Yeah! Like uh, Le Jia Ba Buey?"

Me: "Yes, i have eaten, hahaha!"

Taiwanese guy: "HAHA cool you understand!"

Me: "Yeah, seems like Taiwanese and Hokkien have the same etymological roots!"

*Returns home from Clubmed*

Me (To sister):"Hey, did you know that Taiwanese and Hokkien have some words in common?"

Sister, who just returned from a one month stay in taiwan: "Uh. By the way, Taiwanese IS Hokkien." *Unnerving I-honestly-cannot-believe-you-have-motor-skills glare*

Haha. Pwnt.

So, back on track. See, this whole linguistics thing also happens to tickle my Singaporean-mucus-tendrils *shakes fist angrily at chen shui bian*. I've always felt that the reason why us as Singaporeans never managed to master either language, at least without sacrificing the other to a large extent, was because somehow or another our brains would just explode because of some cosmic constant that impedes multilingualism. But these people are living proof that that's not true! And as a Singaporean, that makes me feel awfully insecure. I dont know.

But the thing is: it's disturbing, the whole accent issue. What really peturbed me about the people I met is that they actually had this whole self-doubt thing, where they went up to me and asked "Hey, do I have a Chinese accent? Because we sound really Chinese to the Americans *cue frustrated grimace*", in that really, really, REALLY, scary, American accent they had. To which, in my state of...catatonic terror (*loses 2d6 moves*), I replied casually "Uh, you guys sound absolutely American to me!".

They responded estatically, with a "Thank you!" and a *pleased smile* , as though I just said that they could all make a living like Kate Moss (refusing to get out of bed for less than 10 grand) or that Taiwanese street snacks rocked (which they do, by the way. except for the chicken) . Hey, and I thought ACSians were bananas! Then i guess they're..uh. Dragonfruits! Dont ask why. The nail in the coffin was when they asked me, genuinely, if Singaporeans spoke in a British accent. Like, 'op of the 'morning to you, guv'nor. S'ry! S'rsly! haha nah thats not British. But the point of my telling you this whole story is:

Haha, Red Tanks shoot better than Green Tanks. But i'm not Waasley :) that vampiric bugger has done this to me no less than FOUR times in the past week! Man I'm dumb. anyway, the REAL point is:

Well see, I think we take Postcolonialism for granted. I, like the Artbiter, do not appreciate Naipaul. Or at least the two novels I've read, anyway, his first two pieces (mystic masseur/miguel street). Honestly, I think his work deserves as much literary merit as Amber Brown Is Not A Crayon, both of which should be placed under the "Will Seriously Dement Your Kid" segment of the Children's section, right next to Calvin and Hobbes. The thing you have to keep in mind when reading Naipaul is this: he pioneered the whole genre of postcolonialism. The way he flourishes his native Trinidadian colloquial English (uh, Tringlish?), would put the whole "Who Owns Singlish?!" debate to shame. He manages to come to terms with his identity; he derides, not worships, the cultural convert as a traitor to his notion of self. He doesn't have to alternate between EITHER an American accent OR a British one! For that alone, this guy deserves a nobel prize. He pioneered a genre that was unspeakably radical in that 1950s world of his, with the shambled remains of an empire and a rising commonwealth. His work defined the terms and mindset by which the peoples of nations, just like ours, acted, spoke, and lived.

So think about it: How many of our movies are just about "The Asian Condition?". Eric Khoo: he's hardly the best film maker in the world. So why does he get critical acclaim? Because he portrays things as they are, he's fine with Singaporeans speaking as they do. That Thai guy who made a sixteen hour long movie: well, apart from showing you how life in Thailand is a tiresome nightmare where you really, really, want to pee but Just Cant Go, is he really scoring points on anything other than novelty? The novelty of someone, from an *shock* Asian *shock* country, being able to come up with his own version of English and claim its as legit as anyone else's? Even now, to so many people, the notion of something this "alternative" is revered. Which is why I think that the main reason why half of us were falling asleep in lit class this year is because its ALREADY established ground. To us, its like: "Move On Already! take out a gun or take off your shirt! do Something!". We've never lived in a community like Achebe's, nor Naipaul's, nor spent our lives in an American school, trying to adapt to their traditions and way of life. We simply, simply, cannot understand. Its a fundamental mismatch of wavelength.

To us: postcolonialism is history, it's passe. We're post-post-colonialists. We're fine with ourselves. We're proud to be Singaporean; not the stupid caramalized good-english-clean-roads version we're Taught, but the hawker-food-eating, lah-leh-ing, ah-beng-bashing tropical dwellers that we Are! More importantly, we take it as a given.

And that, my friends and dear readers, is why we're Anglo-Chinese. And oh yes. ( Independent ) .

By the way, Merry..uh..Boxing Day!
$#@!*% Nova took Christmas! Even despite the time zone difference!

King Kong

2005-12-20T10:51:00.000+08:00

The thing that first strikes you in the opening minutes of King Kong is Peter Jackson's versatility. The montage of scenes depicting 1930s America in the throes of the Great Depression is done with an artistic flair and an eye for continuity. It almost smacks of one of those quiet arthouse movies, at least until we come to Naomi Watts in drag.

Yes, she looks fairly like Charlie Chaplin and seems in her element. Then she gets fired. Jackson's King Kong adaptation is an infusion of disparate styles that do justice to all aspects of the movie. And yet, like sullen echoes on a pond, we can make out Jackson's personal touch. That unique blend of quiet humour that more often than not is everything to the progression of the movie. That masterful depiction of unendurable horror and barbarism. The stark reality of predicament and unutterable futility of action that is so evident in his previous works.

Naomi Watts lends a desperate, charming energy to her Damsel-in-distress character of Ann Darrow, a comedian-actress found lacking in the luck department. The horror of the possibility that she could end up in a burlesque drives her straight into the waiting, megalomanical arms of the monomanical movie director Carl Denham, played by Jack Black with uncharacteristic dignity and seriousness. Denham, of course, stakes everything he has left on his latest pet project, a pseudo-documentarian expedition to hitherto unexplored Skull Island, accompanied by playwright and Darrow love interest Jack Driscoll, played with nervous reticence by the pianist, Adrien Brody. The rest is history. Movie history.

King Kong is best described as a fanboy's dream come true. Jackson is the richest fanboy on earth and he means to spend it wisely and cash in on the returns. What can I say? He relies on his previous success and the reputation that comes with it and spins a miasma for the studios. They snap it up. Luckily Rings wasn't a fluke, because he delivers the goods, this time in true mindless blockbuster perfection. Brontosauruses, giant bats, leeches, gorillas, T-rexes, you name it, there isn't a pause in the animalistic action in the legacy of all those old man vs. animal flicks like Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park 2 and Jurassic Park 3 (et al.)

What sets King Kong apart is its emotional core. Bonds and love and loss and suffering; they come in equal portions with the action. Darrow and King Kong develop a strange, unfathomable relationship; the heart of the beast softens for a beauty. "It was beauty that killed the beast." Driscoll and Darrow, couple in a young blossoming love that should have had more screen time; Kong vs. Driscoll in the subject of Darrow's affections, what couldn't be more disturbing? Horror and hope, civilization vs degeneration, love vs betrayal. The webs too complex for a simple paragraph to cover.

No need to talk about Jackson's direction. Or cinematography. They're good.

The chief flaw of this film is its pacing; I would have preferred less action by far; which would shorten the movie into a more manageable 2.5 hours. Of course, the final scene, that classic sequence done in modern CGI polish, is worth the long 3 hour wait.

Watch it. Anything Jackson makes post-LOTR is probably worth watching, no matter the subject.

How to End A War

2005-12-20T10:45:00.000+08:00

Thither lies the document that put an end to the Thousand-Year War (TYW, The Cabbage War, TCW) between the Imperium of Humanity (Humim, IoH, IH, The Imperium, TI, Sunstar Empire (Outsiders), To'rak'innen (Jandrith), The Great Empire of Man, tGEM, tGEoM) and the Jandrith Domain-that-Encompasses [rough translation] (Jandrith'Kar, The Jandrith Empire, The Enemy, Those Four-Eyed Slugs (apocryphal), The Darkstorm (Outsiders), The Jandrith Dominion, Jandriffa).

Be awed at its grandeur. Be awed at its simplicity. For it is of two edges, for peace, for misunderstanding. It began the war That Took a Billion Lives and ended it, but only when its cause had been lost in the depths of time and Jandrith shared-memory disposal. For it is written by Our Kin, that once was Our Implacable Enemy. It is written in haste and misunderstanding. What began as a peacable dialogue is now cause for mourning. Mourn, O People, for what is lost in the blood of a million suns. Weep for what could have been.

Taken from Kar'Tal'Huuman (The Report on the Humans), as dictated by High Augur Nast'kil to Various Appendages, 88084 of the Kil'vas and 3407 of the Era of the Imperium (EI). Translated by Jonash Kyger, First Scholar to the Court of Terra, 4624 of the Era of the Imperium (EI).

"
1
M'Highest Dictator. Herein is the Report on the Humans. Herein lies Your Subject's eager and unrestrained counsel. The Subject most assuredly suggests immediate war (Option A3) with these mammalian hallucinogen-inducers. (note this translates to Jar'ki'dilvan'dil, a conventional Jandrith curse used for formal occasions. For more information on Jandrith physiology refer to Sandar Koon's Imperial Study on Jandrith Physiology, AA1.)

2
Let Us denigrate Ourselves by offering an Inadequate Explanation to Your Ears. The Diplomatic Function with the humans held on their home planet of Terra, upon First Contact, has dislodged Our Radiosensitive Patches (Jandrith ocular organs) to the unwashed barbarity of this species.

3
These humans have similar requirements to mantain their repulsive physiques as Ours, M'Highest. Immediately following the Contact ceremony the humans invited Us to what passes as an Immersion experience with these unsophisticates. The humans have this concept they call Culture (kuul'cher). We feel ashamed to have received this well at first. We can only drag Our Appendages in chagrin. The head ambassador of the humans invited Us to a Cultural Experience on Terra, the equivalent of going out to observe the unwashed activities of the Common Strata (Kell'tar'klos) of these humans. A portion of this activity took place in the human's food distribution centres.

4
We feel We must explain a facet of this human Culture to Your Munificence, M'Highest. The humans do not heed Our Way. Their strange and repungant mentalities embrace an ideology so removed from Our Own as to be diametrically alien to Us. Unlike Our Food Distribution Centers, that dispense nutrients to One and All in equal proportion, these humans repel the golden caress of Our Way and seek the anti-egalitarian, using packets of conceived value to exchange for items their physiques require, as if their technologies were insufficient to provide in Equality for All. This complicated process was explained to Us by the ambassador, and We profess the profoundest confusion. It seems to Us that the human system of Economics (Ek'nom'necs) is so hopelessly contorted as to abandon all rationality.

5
In any case, We halted at a centre dispensing foodstuff humans require to keep their physiques in shape. The human ambassador terms these foodstuffs Vegetables.

6
Indeed, M'Highest. The humans display the flayed remnants of their invalids for consumption! From their horrible green ganglia to the marrows of their limbs, they hang them all up for their own terrible ends! If You consult Your records, it shall be seen that Vegetables are what humans call their Gil. That such unutterable terror should be unleashed upon the Universe! It was all We could do not to flee at once. For these humans do not merely partake in such degeneration, they flaunt it openly. For now we know they are scions of the Trickster Deity, and spin lies at His whim. Everything humans say is a lie. Everything they do is contrary to Our expectation and Our Way.

7
It was easy enough to perceive the truth after the human ambassador denied Our Perception, for he lies. It is in his nature to do so. He cannot tell the truth. Everything humans say is a lie.

8
The humans rounded off their filthy discourse by invoking a paradox to Augur Go'kan'thos, which killed Them. The humans must be annihliated, their carbon-based biochemistries subjected to schizophrenic contusions. This is Our conclusion.

"

As you can perceive, the Report smoothed misunderstanding once understanding and communication was achieved. The Report ended the War. It paved the way for the Great Law of the Planets, which set the parameters for communication with further aliens. It gives rise to a new era of peace everlasting. It stops the production of paradox guns.O people, witness your salvation in the hands of Jandrith folly and wisdom.

Various Mutterings

2005-12-14T16:17:00.000+08:00

Tom Hanks is just an amazing guy. Castaway is a brilliant piece of shipwreck fiction, and much of this distinction arises from Hank's brilliant depiction of a FedEx executive who has been stranded for close to five years on an unhabitated island in the middle of (the proverbial) nowhere.

Just an example of how brilliant this film was. Hanks is stranded alone. Yet in the course of his singular existence he paints a face out of his own blood on a Wilson volleyball (one of the various packages fortitiously surviving the plane crash with him). This volleyball, aptly (and somewhat predictably) named Wilson, becomes the second most powerful character in the entire movie, based entirely on Hank's interaction with it and cunningly-crafted direction.

A volleyball! No dialogue, no actor's wages, no paparazzi smearing gigs. No credit.

When [spoiler] Wilson is lost at sea on the inevitable return trip, the sheer sense of tragedy is almost overwhelming, not only to Hank's character, but to the viewer himself.[/spoiler]

Words fail me. Go watch it yourself.

***

Jackson might have made his magnum opus (opi?), but it seems he hasn't lost his touch, from what I can tell from the rave reviews on King Kong. Not as good ("of course", the reviewers say) as LOTR, but excellent nonetheless. Some even go so far as to declare it better than the original, which is unheard of, at least until now.

***

Anyway, on Jackson's magnum opus. Based on my loose quantitative analysis of the hype and reviews that have graced this triumph of cinematic achievement, I declare the movies overrated. Not by much, but overrated nonetheless.

My chief gripes are in the area of plot contrivances. Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens have sought to add their own minor alterations to Tolkien's epic. Bad move. Most of them are ill-judged and unbelievable. Not to mention kitschy.

[Rant mode begins here.]

1. Ents. Come on. Ents are the oldest "natural" race in Middle Earth. And yet you can tell me that Treebeard can be bamboozled by a simple and unbelievable rationalization of a half-grown hobbit barely a thousandth of his age, that the Ents are foolish enough to think that Saruman's machinations will not affect them if they stay put and hide, that they are complacent and inattentive enough not to notice the mass deforestation taking place right in their territory by Saruman's minions, and that this travesty could possibly be enough for the Ents to change their glacial minds and attack Saruman.

Ents are wise. That's how Tolkien depicted them. To twist this wisdom, to turn it into a sort of half-baked horticultural senility, is completely implausible. Why they had to change the plot is beyond my comprehension.

"Well, I think this proves that trees can become senile."
- Peregrin

2. Theoden. Whatever happened to that kindly, understanding man who treated Merry with respect and concern, who listened to counsel and followed the wise course of action. Instead we get the alcoholic reformer who treats everyone with barely concealed arrogance and suspicion and disregards Gandalf's admonitions. Who commits his forces only with reluctance. All contact with Merry is removed from the film. The one released in cinemas, in any case.

Theoden is not like that. His character in the book was believable enough. Intercharacter tension can arise from elsewhere. Theoden is a foil for Denethor. They represent the contrast between the two great kingdoms of Men. Now the erstwhile Titanic captain gets to snub his nose at Aragorn and teach lessons to mules. Bah.

"I think I look better in leather myself."
- Theoden

3. Faramir. This makes me cringe. Another potential foil cast into the ravenous flames. Faramir doesn't warrant two ounces of rancid fat now that his character has been completely "revolutionized". The noble and valiant captain of Gondor is now inept at strategy (galloping in a line towards a sea of archers?) and cannot conquer his innate greed. Faramir is another foil, this time for his brother. Well, until the scriptwriters got it into their heads to "give some depth to this character who can oh so magically shrug off the corrupting effects of the ring."

Wham. Faramir becomes as bad as his brother. Another character lost.

"It was the hair. I know it was the hair."
-Faramir, inconsolable

4. The Frodo-Sam schism (Gollum's work, it is, precious!). What gives? Can the sacred friendship really be so strong? Oh, no, it's not nearly realistic enough for Hollywood, is it? Let's get the villian to mouth off a few incriminating lines to seemingly separate them...forever! (And then reunite them, of course. Those fans will never stand for that.)

Hmm. What ever should we do to pull this off? Let's spin some yarn about Samwise stealing some lambas bread! As if he hasn't starved for his master so faithfully over the past few months, carried all their things for him and saved him from a Nazgul! Wait. We'll have to change that too!

"Yeah, he used to stick the finger up at me all the time. Until
Gollum chewed it off. Now he has to use the other one."
-Samwise Gamgee

[Rant mode ends.]

Doubtless LOTR is still a great trilogy. It's strengths outweigh its weaknesses by far. If only they'd not gotten it into their minds to spice things up a bit. Kind of like emptying the entire box of cheese into a plate of spaghetti. And adding anchovies afterwards. I'd take the spaghetti myself. With one or two of the anchovies afterward. No, that was not allegorical. Yes, that was a homage to the man himself.

***

I have been rereading Wheel of Time. Doubtless many condemn it as too slow for their tastes but I like Jordan's universe. I think reading is more of an exposure to viewpoints than mere entertainment. And that's why books with messages tend to be better received that books written for the sole purpose of beachside entertainment.

I think Dan Brown's work is brainy enough. I see some labeling them otherwise. In my opinion that's a patently unfair slur based entirely on his controversial book topics. His writing style is not simplistic, its accessible. He is an Exeter grad and an academic himself. His assertions are not the point here; all are welcome to debate about whether those assertions are valid or not. But as to the quality of his books, there can be no doubt that he writes good ones.

Dan Brown is not, as popularly believed, anti-religion. He is Christian enough. You might call him the modern day equivalent of a Gnostic, or an Arianist, because he does hold several radical ideas about the Christian creed. But aren't all denominations like that, all divided on minor issues of semantics and interpretation? What does it matter? I don't believe any of his books would undermine faith in any way. If his dissenters read carefully into his work they'll see that all "anti-Christian" opinions are solely the opinions of characters, and not of the author himself. And as to the question of Christ's marriage to Mary Magdalene, while he has asserted his belief in that, I don't think it makes him any less a Christian.

GoF and the Rest

2005-12-11T12:24:00.000+08:00

I watched the Goblet of Fire some time ago and it strikes me that a review might be a little overdue. Instead I shall make a comparison of the four movies that have been made so far, starting with, naturally, the Sorceror's Stone.

I. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone

This Columbusian effort should be lauded for its attempts to portray the book to its best extent. Radcliffe displays appropriate boy-wonder at his newfound circumstances. Setting and environments are beautifully and faithfully rendered and executed, especially Hogwarts and the Lake. Grint (Ron) and Watson (Hermione) are decent. Grint in particular shows a talent for acting his part with all of Ron's particular quirks, pecularities and idiosyncracies, an ability he will improve on in latter films. Watson acts well but her Hermione portrayal isn't quite on the spot.

The film itself is a little rushed, especially the Dursleys segment. Maggie Smith (McGonagall) is stern enough to fit her character, although she might want to build on the latent warmth her character (in the books) can show at times. Harris is a disappointment. As Dumbledore he must be energetic and quirky, and his age, though physically apparent, must never be highlighted in his demeanor and actions. Yet, Harris, though majestic enough, rushes his lines, speaks in a hoarse, slurring voice, and displays little emotion of any sort. Columbus's austere direction in relation to intercharacter interactions does little to alleviate this.

The direction itself is average. While the great cinematic pans that show off environments and scenery in Potter's Wonderous World are done with artistic flourish and a dose of audacity (like zooming through a window) Columbus has less skill in directing his characters. There are no poignant moments. Columbus has prior experience in directing children. It shows, but the scenes containing adults have less import and focus.

The book is adhered to to a middling extent. The main alterations involve the cutting or omission of certain elements in the book, and there isn't much of it. However the result is that the movie feels rushed; it seems like certain elements are added only for the sake of pleasing purist fans. In my opinion this shouldn't come in the way of making a cohesive movie that has the same relaxed pace of the book. Although, of course, if such alterations are only for the worse, like the butcherings of the Ents, Elrond, Faramir and Theoden's characters in the LOTR movies, then they should not be done.

Overall Sorceror's Stone is a decent effort, and while it may not have the same impact as the LOTR or Contact adaptations it nevertheless remains enjoyable to watch.

II. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

By far the worst-made movie in the franchise. Everything that was good in the first movie is missing. Everything bad in the first movie is painfully accentuated.

The acting of the three main characters deteriorates somewhat, except Grint's. Radcliffe no longer has any cause to display the boyish wonder of the first movie, and the emotionality is a bit over his head at this point. The opening scene is lacklustre, failing to capitalize on the potential humorous import. Dobby is terribly voiced and animated, and his conversations with Harry are faltering and unrealistic, on a level far below Serki's Gollum rendering. The entire polyjuice potion sequence is painful to watch. Harry and Ron just give too much away for Malfoy not to notice. The shock of Hermione turning into a cat analogue is painfully underdeveloped. Myrtle, however, acts well, albeit in a slightly over-the-top fashion.

Coltrane (Hagrid) is as ever the quintessential half-giant Hogwarts gamekeeper, and he provides one of the best performances in the entire franchise. Harris, however is worse in this film. His voice has grown even more hoarse and he seems to be rather detatched from the entire course of the film. Radcliffe's voice is also breaking, along with Grint's, which spoils their dialogue somewhat, as it's a little harder to determine tonality and emotional impact from them, and it just sounds like a low-quality audio recording.

I would also like to pour detriment on Tom Riddle's absymal acting. He is worse than Harris. Imagine a teenage boy looking fairly like Clarke Kent in Smallville voicing cheap stereotypical villan lines and laughing like an incarcerated madman. While all the time acting disinterested and showing minimal facial expression, and doing absolutely nothing to Harry as he climbs around the chamber avoiding the Basilisk except shouting "no!" at appropriate moments just like he would to a brick wall. (I know that's what he does in the books, but the movie just makes it seem ludicrous.)

Columbus's directing is uninspired and dry, going even further than austere. The Quidditch match is "made more dramatic" (and it isn't really, just boringly drawn-out), even though it is described as one of the shortest in gaming history in order to denote the extent of Malfoy's incompetence and the advantage of skill over money. Apart from what I will refer to as the "Columbus epic pan" (wide sweeping pans used to establish setting and accentuate environmental impact on the scene) the direction is at best lacklustre.

Music is also a sticking point. While the themes are typically good (he is, after all, John Williams), the environmental soundtrack used during moments of drama, tension, et al leaves much to be desired. The same thing with Episodes II and III of Star Wars. Ironically Episode I had the best music of the lot.

The sole beacon in this large mess is the character of Lucius Malfoy. Played with charisma and genuine threat, Isaacs delivers the goods; ever the quintessential villian, he makes another strong appearance in The Patriot, playing the bluster-spouting Brit, Colonel William Tavington.

Overall, however, Chamber is quite a pain to watch, start to finish. It's bogged down by virtually everything that counts in a film of quality, and the result, though understandable enough to the viewer, gives an impression of...well, inadequacy.

III. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Thankfully, Azkaban is a much better movie than either of the former, thanks in part to the pressures of time. In a franchise where the children are the most essential to the success or failure of the movie it never hurts to have a director who, at least, knows his stuff.

Although Cuaron hadn't worked with children before this film the acting of the Big Three is much better now. Part of the reason is, of course, the pressures of puberty, weaving its hormonal magic among the stars of the show. They are more able to cope with the adult issues inherent in the books, and since they're all older than the prescribed age they are supposed to be acting, it's all the better.

The trailer was misleading, I must say. The deceptively edited scene of Hermione punching Malfoy struck me as an inept piece of direction, but thankfully the movie didn't turn out like that. Cuaron's direction retains Columbus's sense of epic scope and adds an additional human dimensionality to the film in a way that wasn't overly present in the previous films. Cuaron incorporates humour and drama, even horror, in a seamless tapestry of beautifully rendered environments and (relatively) human interactions.

Dumbledore has been replaced with another actor, following Richard Harri's unfortunate death in the process of shooting. Gambon is a much more energetic Dumbledore than Harris. Although he has little of the mild wisdom of Dumbledore's character in the books and is actually rather messy-looking (and he rarely smiles in the movie). Overall I'd say Gambon is a better Dumbledore, which is more appropriate to the increasingly Dumbledore-centric stance of latter novels.

David Thewlis is perfect as the werewolf professor Remus Lupin. He has the exact combination of warmth, competence and scruffiness I'd expect from Lupin. Although I don't know about the moustache.

Gary Oldman would have been excellent, if it weren't for the persistent casting of his abilities in villian-roles. This served quite well for his tenure as the mistaken murderer of twelve Muggles, but after the Revelation it just becomes rather surreal, with all the images of his prior roles as villians swimming around disconcertingly in one's mind (Air Force One, Lost in Space etc.) Oldman is another one of those villian actors, just like Jason Isaacs and Rufus Sewell (A Knight's Tale, The Legend of Zorro, and Joaquin Phoenix looking uncannily like him in Gladiator). He was in Batman Begins and if you didn't notice him there he was Commissioner Gordon. Commissioner Gordon. And we all saw him in Air Force One and Lost in Space playing the irredeemable wretches Ivan Korshunov and Zachary Smith. And he was the villian in The Fifth Element. And Dracula.

Ok. Enough of Oldman.

One of the best moments in the franchise so far is Harry summoning the Patronus Light and realizing the fallacy of his self-doubt. Not only is that an extremely significant moment it is also one of the high points of the franchise. Everything about that scene is perfect, from the score to the direction to the acting to the special effects to the dialogue. It was a beautiful moment in a great movie.

Azkaban is made great by the redress of the problems present in the first two movies. Everything from directing to dialogue provides so much more impact to the viewer this time around. The final moments of the film are also masterfully rendered, with the scene and setting providing much of the atmosphere and mood. A fitting capstone to the best movie of the four.

IV. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Thought I was going to be careless and put IIII?

Goblet of Fire is a difficult movie to review. Its's massive, the most ambitiously conceived of the franchise to date. It also has a markedly different tone from the other movies. Once again, a different director takes the helm of the filming. Newell has a markedly different style. Difficult to place, but sequestered nonetheless.

There have been many complaints about this particular movie. While I considered it quite enjoyable to watch it isn't as evocative or powerful as Azkaban and does have its slow moments. The chief complaints seem to focus on the stark differences between the movie and the book. And it is true that the producers changed a hell lot. From tiny little details to larger ones and gaping omissions, they haven't exactly been lenient on the paring knife and the correction tape.

Entire plotlines have been shifted around, taken out, played with, eaten and excreted in a way purist fans find putrescent. The Dursleys have been purged. The Quidditch World Cup is dealt with in 15 minutes. The game isn't even shown. All that's revealed is the not so good-natured strutting matches between the opposing teams and the aftermath, which involves a rather pathetic reenactment of the sorely-missed match by the Weasely twins. Skeeter's eventual demise is removed as well. Personally, I'm not fussy about such changes, as long as they contribute positively to the movie itself. And these omissions are indeed necessary to pare down the length of the already lengthly movie.

The acting of the Big Three remains good. The characters have matured in ways not entirely alien to the pubescent populace, those who have lived with Harry for the years of his story now. Hermione shows off her, uh, assets in the Yule Ball, looking exceptionally elegant in a pink gown. (Not blue! The purists wail.) Ron and Harry are typical gangly awkward looking teenagers undergoing the throes of puberty. Ron is the sad one. Supporters of the Ronermione pairing (a name of my own coining) will wince at their obvious complicated miscommunication-perception-acceptance love marathon-maze that threatens to upstage dragons in potential threat parameters, as Harry so succinctly puts it. (The actual quote was something like "I'd rather face one of those dragons again than ask a girl to the Ball.")

Dumbledore and McGonagall are better than ever. Gambon is in his element and even shows his softer side now, although he is as scruffy as ever. I only wish they'd included Sirius Black in the flesh, his character provides much in the way as a foil and contrast (and parallel) to Harry's own.

Fiennes is a creditable Voldemort, although he does come across as more fishlike than I'd expected - with his reddish eyes, missing nose and pasty white skin. Though he does radiate a sense of formidable evil in his incongruously cultivated British accent.

What I didn't like was how the Riddle House scene was cut down and altered so drastically - that removed much of the depth from the movie. Although the movie itself was less complex than the book, a necessity to fit two and a hal hours of screentime.

Cedric's death and the tragic scene of Amos clutching his son is another well-crafted moment. The emotional import is present and revolutionizes the course of the franchise, transforming something light-hearted into a progressively darker and more brooding saga in the books and movies to come.

Goblet is, all in all, a reasonably well-made movie, entertaining, yes, but encompassing a few faults of its own, mainly in the preserve of plot progression. Here's to OotP.

Overall Ranking

1. Prisoner of Azkaban
2. Goblet of Fire
3. Sorceror's Stone
4. Chamber of Secrets

Evrpa

2005-12-05T10:45:00.000+08:00

Europe. Birthplace of modern Western civilization and cradle of the Industrial Age.

The two destinations of this trip were scenic, neutral Switzerland, home of the UN and bastion of engineering prowess, and ancient, temperamental Italy, with its monuments, Catholic centralism and pickpockets. As the plane touched down on the snow-packed runway of Zurich International I began to have an idea of the cold. Apprehensive, maybe. My expectations of the weather were frightfully bolstered by pictures of frostbitten fingers caked with gangrene and bad movie stills of Batman and Robin. Fortunately (or otherwise), such fantasies collapse in upon themselves when faced by the mighty force of empirical reality.

This is Switzerland.

Well. The first was probably taken near the German border, and the third shows the Swiss Alps. The second picture is Lucerne, a Swiss city.

The view from the top of the Jungfraujoch, the Top of Europe.

The Swiss are a truly pan-European society. The UN Headquarters are in Geneva, the primary language in the north is (Swiss) German, the primary language in the south is (Swiss) Italian, Swiss guards protect the Pope in the Vatican, and most of them speak English as a second language as well. Switzerland has retained its strictly neutral position since the 1500s, refraining from participation in most, if not all, wars, that could have potentially involved it. Combined with their traditional industrial, financial and technological niches as well as thir relatively stable economy and society, and one gets something close to what constitutes as an ideal a society as is possible given human nature. Of course, Switzerland is not without its faults. I am told that some sectors of Swiss society are given to racism, and the Swiss, of course, trap themselves within a cul-de-sac of sorts, achieving a sort of cultural stasis that is partly evidenced by the archaic nature of their Germanic dialect. But these are few and far between.

Another selling point of the Swiss, of course,would be its natural beauty. It is a place of lakes, glaciers, mountains, forests, the like. The primary terrain of this naturally mountainous country seems to be naturally craggy, which is obvious given the fact that most of Switzerland resides within the Alps. The compensation is revenue from winter sports and tourism, and the chance to enjoy mountains and clean air every morning.

On to Italy. This nation, this boot, is rather different from the serenity of Switzerland. Noisy, congested and a cradle of a beauty of a very different sort, and rather lacking in natural beauty of the igneous kind, this journey meanders through the old principalities of the fragmented city-states of the Italian peninsula, and harking back even further to the days of the Caesars and Marcus Aurelius. Milan, Verona, Venice, Florence, Rome. Cities full of an ancient splendour and a modern squalour, pickpockets and beggars at virtually every turn, bustling with lead-pumping cars, graffiti and the threat of a hidden Mafia member just around the corner (only, of course, in Sicily). Italian cities are a special breed. Every city resembles a dual-layered onion. The old city, in all its architectural and religous splendour, resides in the centre, and the modern morass sprawls around it. Even Venice is no exception, flooded as it is.

Italy; Milan and Venice.

Rome was a disappointment of circumstance, not nature. Polluted as it was, it was still given to majesty. But the proceedings were devastated by a torrent of rain such as Rome has (by the words of the chagrined tour guide) rarely seen. To rub salt in the wound, the very next day, the end of the Rome tour, had absolutely beautiful weather.

The Vatican was interesting. One really gets the sense of the power vested into the papal authority, one that rules over hundreds of millions of individuals over many nationalities and cultures. Cultural wealth and the diversity of religous art and its monuments is diplayed in the most magnificent of fashions. Michelangelo's frescoes on the walls of the Sistine Chapel, his architectural masterpieces, St. Peter's Cathedral and Square, the paintings, mosaics, sculptures and structures spanning the length and breadth of artistic tastes of eras then and now - they are testament to the power of religion and its artifices. Rites and culture, atavistic and hallowed, juxtaposed against the modern chaos of today's frantic reality; that is Italy.

Unfortunately, the weather was so terrible that only a few pictures of Vatican City are available, and all are obscured by the elements. I rage against their caprice. Sadly, the Sistine Chapel does not allow for photos to be taken in its interior, because of a) typical Italian suspicion, and b) "precautions taken in the name of art".

Predictably, the Vatican is also crowded by tourists and pilgrims.

If I'm not wrong, that's St. Peter's. I'm not on a helicopter in that point in time so the more traditional aerial view isn't available.

Refer here for that view.

Rome was in crisis that day. Everyday there's another crisis. The crisis of the day was rain and traffic jams in rain. Another poignant visitation was to the city of Verona, of Shakesperean fame.

This is reputed to be Juliet's balcony. Not the Shakespearan Juliet (in the sense of the Shakespearan Richard III or the Shakespearan Julius Casear) but the one the play (and the one before it) was based on.

In my opinion, thoroughly unromantic. Because of the weather, maybe.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa and accompanying structures.

In Rome, there are two things outside the Vatican that are said to be, on any visit there, sinful to miss.

A more traditional view of the Colesseum was made impossible by the rain.

All in all, Switzerland and Italy showcase what is so iconic about Europe; it's laid-back attitude, fueled by the sheer weight of its history, its natural beauty, its grandeur and history and religon and art. And maybe food.

I shall top this off with a last photo of Napoleon with a bird sitting on him.

Twinkle Twinkle

2005-12-04T21:24:00.000+08:00

Xiao Ming was a rather fortunate boy. He seemingly had a large majority of local schoolchildren in his employ, strenuously pounding pen against paper in transcribing his daily encounters, grinding the moral lessons within for ease of inculcation. In that way, he had been a celebrity from birth, with teachers, parents and students alike addicted to his literature, breathing the permeating eraser dust of Confucian values and idealistic endings.

His relations said he was precocious. You would be too, if you spent as much time thinking as he did.

What confused him at present, though, was why four letter words would earn one a good slap and an ensuing spanking when used in English, and yet, when used in his mother tongue, would be assessed as evidence of one’s linguistic flair. He dutifully attributed this contradiction to the all pervasive and highly invasive Western Influence, with an accompanying apt nod of the head and cocking of the neck. He missed such simple problems, for they almost served as a distraction. The black clouds ushered the white out of the sky, and he lay still on his bed once more.

Stardom, however, still carried its usual perils in his world. He did after all have a lot to live up to. In fact, it was in his very name. Xiao Ming – small, and bright. Like a star. Except that stars weren’t that small, come to think of it, they could swallow, cleanse and consume worlds in a blink of an eye. But for most purposes, he preferred a petite image. In any case, even his companions, or what was left of them, claimed that he was all “Spaced Out”. It seemed that fate conspired to elevate him above the common, observing benevolently as the world ran its course and exhausted itself, open for his taking. After all, stars always had a bright future, which was of course a particularly spectacular death, although the exact time that “future” would come was always accurate to only a few million years.

Anyhow, it was for this future that he was alive, bothering to draw the next breath and to pump the next beat of his tiny heart. It didn’t matter at all what he was by day, because then he was but a hapless boy, fresh off Madam Tussaud’s wax press. Except for the bed sores, the limp mouth, and the broken body; she wouldn’t make those, no one wanted them. The same way no one wanted to know what really happened to Xiao Ming, so long as he remained a shining beacon, an example to all children under the age of twelve, after which they were surrendered to the other stars; Madonna, Britney, and dear old Celine. Well, even a paralyzed boy was better than those three, he supposed.

As the amber light streamed through the slits in his confinement, he reached down and picked up one of his bedtime stories, written by a schoolchild of seven in slender cursive on paper with blue stripes. Xiao Ming and the Awful Car Accident, the title proudly proclaimed. According to this one, he had crossed the road without looking, but the car had stopped in time and everyone learnt a lesson. How touching. He sensed the sting of salt in his eyes. He didnt know what to feel.

Then it was night again, his turn to shine.

~A solemn tribute to chinese, which i am not taking next year

Take Two

2005-11-30T03:12:00.000+08:00

I am Toitle. NOT Toilet, as our alumni present so adamantly claim. That established, I, too, am present at the CST camp, and I, too, have not posted anything for quite some time. Therefore, lest you forget my presence:

Firstly, I. Love. My. Juniors. Really, I do. Imagine this: a group of virile, hyperactive Sec 1s are placed in a locked computer room for hours on end, left to jabber at keyboards like monkeys at typewriters. What do you get at the end of the session? No, not the script for Macbeth. More surprisingly, not slipshod work obviously spawned of Liero addiction. What they were supposed to do was an advertising project on Chicken Rice, utilizing whatever computer skills they had at hand. And instead of the dull, utterly uninterested response (and, more notably, characteristic of acsians) which we expected, we had people begging us to allow them to polish up their projects. In lieu of sleep. And a gaming tournament. As well as supper, after we starved them for dinner. Hah! <333

Needless to say, these projects are Quite Impressive. I could print them on pink cardboard and pass them out in a banana suit along the snobbiest sections of town and still be taken rather seriously. Maybe even fill a couple of collection cups. Awesome, innit. Although i must say, i really do detest the fact that the camp at large has been FORCE FED different variants of chicken rice for the past six meals. Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Touching Chicken Rice again. Do remind me and supply the necessary tight slap should i ever suggest this. Thank you.

Also, this reporter can corroborate the brashly declared "Sleep is for noobs! Amateur!" comments made during the camp by a certain someone from 2003. What was omitted previously, however, is that Karan himself spouted that quote, and in an interesting fashion at that. This is the entire synopsis of our intellectually stimulating, albeit short, conversation:

"Uh, Karan, you really should get some sleep."
"Nonsense! Sleep is for noobs! Amateur!"
"Okay. Yeah, sure."
"ZzZzzzzZ" *hands fall limply to sides*

Yep, he proceeded to fall asleep, quite unceremoniously. To think we had just consumed Mr Chew's personally recommended coffee the night before! Black, too, since we didnt have any creamer or sugar to neutralise the foul concoction. Disgrace and dishonour! Hound him about this till the day he renounces coffee and the content of his posts changes substantially! :D

Additionally, I have realised why he misses the odd day at school after a late night. Let me assure you, friends, that a groggy sleep-starved Karan is not a nice thing, preferably approached with a five foot long cattle prod. And a stun gun set to "Kill, Incinerate and Vacuum". Essentially, our club President had to lavish considerable time and resources to entice said creature out of his cozy sleeping bag, all the while being assaulted by threats of revenge and the like. Think dragon lair, with a whole lot more of adamantite-eating fire, except without the treasure. Painful. Luckily, Karan, like dragons, can be easily lured out of his lair by the threat of ice-cold water and an ensuing dunking. Karan's Kryptonite. Hurhur. As I write this, he is looking down my back and sighing rather pointedly (a word he suggests).

Anyway, things would be more fun if I didnt keep drifting in and out of consciousness, and the world didnt keep bobbing around me. Ah well. Bed time. By that, I mean it's DotA until dawn.

Night's Dawn Trilogy

2005-11-15T20:03:00.000+08:00

Just finished the Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton.

At 3000 pages, this monster of an epic stands as one of the longer trilogies I've ever had the chance to read. The Night's Dawn Trilogy consists of The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God. All are well over a thousand pages, and all pursue a topic no less than the fate of sentience in the universe.

It has been hailed as British sci-fi's seminal masterwork, the product of genius that puts it on the level of classics such as Clarke's Odyssey series and Herbert's Dune. It is no less than a complex taprestry of action, metaphysics, relationships, politics, economics, and spirituality, all wound together into one massively faceted embodiment of the quintessential masterpiece. It is also one of the few successful cross-genre tomes; its links to horror and military fiction are not to be denied, and this remains as one of the trilogy's strong points.

Hamilton has shown a strong prediliction to extreme graphicity in his novels, and Night's Dawn is no exception. Existing beside his intricate descriptions of a culture in all its minute aspects are depictions of graphic violence, sex, depravity, and cruelty. While it is debatable whether Hamilton seeks to portray a balanced view of human civilization, or whether it is intended to add spice to what is already a gripping story, I must say that this unfortunate aspect of the series is not appreciated by many, including myself.

It is unlikely that a complete copy of the series may be found in the major bookstores. As of last inspection there remains one intact copy, and it is not in prime condition.

Hamilton's Commonwealth saga, his latest offering, has just ended with the release of Judas Unchained in bookstores around the island. Procurement is being considered.

P.S. It seems that Hamilton's saga has inspired, other, lesser, offerings. Elements in Night's Dawn are especially present in Anderson's Saga of Seven Suns, mainly in the form of Edenists, a subbranch of humanity who live in habitats circling gas giants, and who mine essential elements from their skies, enabling ships to use their FTL engines. It is also noted that the Edenists mantain a stranglehold and a virtual monopoly over this fuel; without it interstellar ecnonomies would collapse. The lone Edenist planet is a waterworld.

Gaia

2005-11-11T16:22:00.000+08:00

"Oh, gosh, Kent, get off it," Madison complained.

They were in the lounge, two scientists the very splitting image of the ancient stereotype. Jet-black cups of coffee liberated their aromas into the air. All around entropy waxed ever and small particles contributed inexorably to the ultimate decline of the universe.

"I still say, why not?"

Madison sighed theatrically, and proceeded to vent cigarette smoke at the other man's face. Ash fell from the glowing stub as his hands danced in dramatic chagrin. "Utter frivolity, I say. You're a scientist, man, not some New Age hippie in bandanas. The department wants our paper out by next week and we sit here and talk about scientific improbabilities."

He had almost substituted the word for "impossibilities", but Madison was an old hand and naturally had all his bases covered. It was almost an instinctive reaction, but one that eliminated several precedents for professional suicide.

Kent's face was still lit in that manic glow, an almost childlike wonder dancing across his craggy features. Madison blanched sourly, and took another puff from his cigarette. Particles clashed. On the other side of the world a dog whimpered. Kent, as usual, was oblivious to his partner's apparent lack of enthusiasm. "Just think, now, it would be utterly fantastic, wouldn't it, Madison. Just as we are the incorporated totality of all our cells, linked together in biological and chemical harmony, may not our world be made up of the totality of all life, all of us cells in the vast structure, only that we think and know? The earth is an organism, a singular entity, like common biology, the sum of all parts working in cohesion. A Gaia, not in the traditional Asimovian sense, but something that we have lived with since the beginning."

Madison took another puff. "One thing, Kent. We fight each other. We don't work together. Life on earth has always been a war, a competition. Utterly unlike how our bodies work."

Kent's smile was brilliant. "Ah, but there I catch you, Madison. You're too narrow-minded. Life flourishes on Earth, does it not? Does that not mean that life is successful on Earth? Yes. What we are faced with is that traditional outcropping of the old Fermi Paradox. How can we know the circumstances of xenobiological development, or assume that it is similar to our own? An alien's body may be a battlefield of mutation and hypermutation that allows it to thrive. Or perhaps something like the battle of sperm to penetrate the ova. The strongest plasmoids dominate its mutagenic development. In fact, that is exactly what happens to us. Purposeful genetic selection! Wouldn't that be wonderful? No matter how it is done?"

Once Kent got into the mood, there was no stopping him. Madison bent forward and grasped at his coffee. Soon his expression turned blissful, as the strong liquid coursed through his system, suffusing it with tender warmth. "Why are you doing this to me, Kent?" he muttered.

"So," Kent went on, "Gaia may well exist, a proto-consciousness governed by its constituent cells. Which, in turn, are governed by their own! Why, the galaxy itself could well be such an entity! Of course, it would think the most glacial thoughts, and its experiental lifespan merely lasting a human lifetime. And humans will spread, if it does come to that. We may well spread across our Galaxy one day."

Madison did not give voice to this line of thought. Kent's words painted the human race as some form of malaise, proliferating across Nature like some malignant cancer. Is that what we are, then? Cells gone insane? The nightmare of the environmenalist treehuggers. What a dreadful metaphor for the totality of human achievement.

He could not wonder if the metaphor was not more apt than it seemed. His mind wandered to all the myraid tools of death that could potentially assail the human race. Volcanoes, floods, tsunamis, hell, even meteors like those which had caused the Chixulub crater at the Yucatan. All means to induce some twisted form of apoptosis, the cell death of humanity. He wondered if the Trojans that now clustered around Jupiter's lagrange point were not now potential scalpels, primed to cut humanity out of the steaming innards of an ailing world. He wondered if the threat of solar prominences and solar storms were not like the radiologist's weapons, the inscrutable tracers or radioscopy machines deployed to deal with these malignant growths.

Madison could almost sense those cosmic judges, not knowing that they were already watching from below.

Project Eclipse

2005-11-09T14:28:00.000+08:00

Eclipse Rising has now begun.

Eclipse Rising is a casual experiment in writing, where contributors independently develop a universe and a plot in a given fantasy world, where each must accomodate the developments of others and mantain the continuity of the storyline.

The preliminary story takes place in a continent known as Avast, one of many in a vast world still within a Romanesque-Dark age. There isn't actually a cohesive plot yet. But it will emerge from the spontaneous writings of contributors, and develop with each successive chapter. Of course, the product will be large, chaotic, a patchwork of different plotlines and character developments and twists.

It is an exploration in combined creativity, perhaps.

4 Years Ago

2005-11-06T14:19:00.000+08:00

It's always sad when you glance at the cover of Clarke's masterwork, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the one that was turned into a movie classic by Stanley Kubrick, whose theme became synonymous with vintage sci-fi flicks, whose psychologically-maladjusted supercomputer HAL became IBM's unofficial mascot.

Look at the year, read the book, take a glance into the real world, and examine the state of it today. Clarke was always zealous about what he called "failures of imagination" and "failures of nerve", crimes he said have been committed throughout history by snobbish rich scientists whom which such automatic dismissals of the new and untried have become pure instinct. Clarke has committed the opposite; he was too optimistic, perhaps. Computers as advanced as HAL do not exist; secret missions to Jupiter have not been launched (or have they?); and nothing like a large black plastic rectangle has been discovered either on the Moon or orbiting the system's largest planet.

The last manned mission to the Moon was Apollo 17, in 1972. With the beginning of Detente came a successive scaling-down of the space program conducted by the only nation then capable of sustaining such a campaign. Missions were limited to passive scientific undertakings. No man has set foot on any world save Earth, even though Mars Society president Robert Zubrin formulated a low-cost, effective plan that would get humans on Mars - by 1996. The ISS is a white elephant, and NASA operates under a Congress more interested in Osama and the economy.

Clarke wrote 2001 in the 1960s, before the first manned mission to the moon. His imagination, while expansive, reached too far. He was too much of a visionary. He didn't take into account the underlying diplomatic factors of the Cold War - the primary impetus for astronautical development in the first place. After the Soviets were thrown onto the ground by the victorious forces of American capitalism, it was the economy, stupid. Then it was Osama. Manned flights to Mars have been postponed to dates like "by 2020", and the next Moon landing (by Americans, in any case) will be in 2013. It seems like the Taikonauts will claim space now and upstage the Americans, and even though space recognizes no national jurisdiction, individuals are not barred from extraterrestrial land ownership.

Space will be the wild frontier of future centuries, but the sheer difficulty of sending men and women up there has muted the enthusiasm of the hardy souls who are wont to proliferate into this vast, uncharted expanse of mystery and wonder. There will be no gold rush like that which tore up the virgin West and paved it over with highways and gas stations. As long as nations have the economic clout to mantain a stranglehold over space research and exploration there will be almost negligible progress in this vital next step in human development.

It may be that the quest for space once again takes on a psychological and ideological significance; the day when China seizes the reins of space is the day when it truly becomes the premier superpower of the world.

The Quintessential Nova

2005-11-04T20:31:00.000+08:00

In a fit probably triggered by apoplexy at the dismal state of his finances and/or room Nova has coerced me to post this slightly edited, incoherent MSN convo he and I had on the 4th of November.

Nova:
http://banks.acs.sch.edu.sg/acs_indep/sysinfo/

Nova:
Processors 4 Model Intel Xeon(TM) CPU 2.40GHz
Chip MHz 2394.81
Cache Size 512 KB

Nova:
DUAL XEONS WITH HT

Nova:
OUR SCHOOL SERVER HAS DUAL XEONS WITH HT

Nova:
and look!!

Nova:
Current Users 0
Load Averages 0.00 0.00 0.00

Nova:
0.00 load averages?!

Nova:
WASTE OF RESOURCES

Nova:
rahhh!

Nova:
=(

Nova:
why not give those quad xeons to [removed by blog admin]?

Nova:
[removed by blog admin]

Nova:
=(

A Priori says:
the things you learn when you read digital fortress

Nova:
i learned about MD5 hashes when programming my bot!

Nova:
nothing to do with digital fortress!

Nova:
dan brown doesn't know anything about cryptography!

A Priori says:
get off esoteric computer talk

A Priori says:
*return, karan... return*

Nova:
esoteric!

Nova:
hashing, sir, is a BASIC of cryptography!

Nova:
ESOTERIC!

A Priori says:
computer-based cryptography is esoteric in itself

Nova:
bah!!

Nova:
merely because you lack the cranial capacity to comprehend it

Nova:
by the way

A Priori says:
rather

A Priori says:
i lack the large teeth, thick round glasses, and gawky complexion

Nova:
at 2 am kenneth told me that flagellation was "not his style"

Nova:
are you saying i'm a nerd/geek?

A Priori says:
and jerking lisp

Nova:
if so, i'm deeply complimented.

Nova:
JERKY LISP?!

A Priori says:
and pseudo-autistic reserve

Nova:
pseudo-autistic reserve???

A Priori says:
and large, ill-fitting clothes

A Priori says:
and messy, unkept room

Nova:
large, ill-fitting clothes?!

Nova:
how on earth did you know my room has degenerated into a mess again?

A Priori says:
and pychopathic desire to destroy the large software corporations of the world

A Priori says:
(or, failing that, to join their top-secret R&D branches)

A Priori says:
and single-minded philia/mania in all things computer-based

DISCLAIMER: All this is of course, in good humour. Suing for any reason at all is undefined. And that includes myself. And Karan.

A Brief Moment of Time

2005-11-04T18:40:00.000+08:00

IBA has ended at last, and unfinished tasks have been unceremoniously dumped back onto the laps of those who issued them, even as completed ones have, in perhaps imperceptible and unseen ways, aided in the smooth running of that particular branch of the vast maritime empire of this nation.

Truly do the holidays begin now. If only the rotten weather would let up. When I say rotten, I mean rain. Rain rain rain. McKenna's All Weather Haulage has never seen a wetter fall. The sky god trembles in a capricious drunken fit, and colossal pots of his carefully-prepared rain plummet in droves onto the ground as his mad raving knocks them from their hallowed shelves.

I remember reading (from one of Clarke's novels, I believe) that John von Neunmann once predicted that accurate weather prediction and control would become possible, but computers would become so monstrous and expensive that only governments would be able to afford them. The situation is pretty much reversed, evidently. Sadly.

***

After two months that will seem both an eternity and a fleeting whisper; after the healing wind blows, the cycle will start again. That is not what gives me trepidation. It's that after a brief two years, the eternal and comforting cycle will be impossibly broken. And what then? I ask myself, how well-prepared will I be to face that time?

Human life is a brief moment in time.

And I've been meaning to watch Firefly, after all the good I've heard about it and Serenity. I'm still looking for it.

Surreality

2005-10-31T18:53:00.000+08:00

Holidays are well nigh. For those who don't have IBA, they have already begun.

While browsing through the old toon sites I came across ptikobj, a flash animation so bizarre and surreal that it possesses a strange allure.

Stirred by curiosity I visited fat-pie, the toon's creator's website, and discovered the full extent of the horrors flash can unleash. Firth used an euphemism - he admits his toons are odd. But the full-formed cartoons that sprang full-formed (or at least half-formed) from his dreams go much further than that. I showed them to Clement, who promptly was sick. (A mistake, on hindsight.)

The author: David Firth, the mind behind such terrors as Salad Fingers. It strikes me that such an unbalanced mind as his would be only too capable of making a toon like ptikobj. Although fortunately lacking the explicit violence and aberrance that characterizes his other works that toon does contain a slight macabre element.

The strangely named "ptikobj" is based on his dreams. Evidently, the less...disturbing ones. The more disturbing ones are based on his own website. If you do want to watch them, be warned.

Or you could always watch Late Night Shopping instead. It resembles Kevin's trekkie site, except its probably more intelligent.

Sorry. IBA disorientates me.

Fare Thee Well

2005-10-29T14:53:00.000+08:00

I am in a rather contemplative mood. To achieve this same mood, i recommend Porcelain by Moby or You'll be in my heart by umm..that guy who sang tarzan. Yep.

Anyway, it’s almost cruelly anticlimactic how this year ended. Honestly, I doubt even the lucid talents of the guest writers of The March Of The Penguins could make things any less unforgivably unexciting. Most of us have been together for what, at least four years? Some even more, their association stretching back to primary 3. Or even primary 1, or kindergarten, or in the case of our long-departed brothers sian/yao, the womb and all its associated embryonic fluids.

The point is, after all these years of companionship and camaraderie (haha if you cant beat 'im, join 'im), after all these glorious and ardous(and, more notably,girl-free) years, our silly days have come to an end with half of us on work attachment and the other half skipping school. With, the remaining (and arguably nonexistent) stragglers simply coming to school out of painful obligation or mindless routine, awaiting with bated breath for the school bell to chime its crescendo of liberation. Its quite...disturbing!

Anyhow, it’s been a good year. In fact, a good four years. Or six, or nine, or sixteen (okay, trying too hard here.) I daresay most of us will look back on this time with at least some degree of nostalgia, as well as a fair amount of regret. Maybe even the occasional bucket of warm, fuzzy tears. I’m not going to go into detail here because well, Far Too Many Things have happened. We’ve all been nurtured as hundred year trees and overflowing vegetable baskets. Or perhaps unashamed bottom-askers (pardon me, O level in three days :) ). We really do owe our friends, our teachers, and our school (and I mean favours, not a good, sound beating)

So, anyhow, remember kids, when you grow up, you must drink water and remember source. Therefore, all your cash are belong to us! *flashes Korean grin*. Ugh , four years in school and all ive learnt is leet :| And we wonder why other schools call us e-leet-ists. (oh.man.so...bad)

Okay okay. On a sadder note; I suppose that while we will remain as schoolmates, we'll be apart and in a new compound. Honestly, thats adequate cause for sadness! Doesn’t it strike you that we’ll never see the terribly mismatched pastel tiles of these classrooms ever again? Or, more importantly, that our crazy clingy motley crew will be unleashed unto the rest of the unsuspecting student populace, never to return to our spawn..point? (for lack of a better word) . Come to think of it, perhaps its precisely because we realize this that we don’t seem to be unduly concerned. (okay, my sad writing faiiils). Or, seriously, maybe its not masculine to let these things show. Maybe masculinity is more about big muscles with aromatically distasteful armpits. But I think I speak for the class at large when I say that we’ll miss one another. No one wants to admit it, but its quite (hopefully) how everyone feels! and we'll do so really soon. Really! Ahh, nevermind. *joins Tinky Winky in his jolly...frolicking*

So…I guess…this is goodbye then! This goes out to all of you, students, teachers, friends. Au revoir! Auf Wiedersehen! Zhai Jian!
-- In fact, i quite like that Chinese farewell. It literally means that we’ll see each other again.

And we will.

*terms and conditions apply.

nah, kidding.
(and bye jondorf! have fun in england)

Work Attachment

2005-10-25T21:02:00.000+08:00

In the spirit of comradeship and camaraderie I have decided to follow the example of Hoe and write about my work attachment.

There is nothing more unfortunate that having a workplace smack in the middle of that paradimensional realm we candidly refer to as "nowhere". Ok, maybe there is. Something along the lines of having to report two hours before regular office work times and an hour and a half before that to catch a feeder bus it would be so much more convenient to ignore.

The workplace in question is smugly secure in its proud position of being in close proximity with the Second Link and, like Tatooine, further than anywhere from the bright center of Singapore. The company in question is the uninspiringly-named KeppelFELS, specializing in oil rigs, and, as I hurriedly jotted down in my log, "other miscellaneous maritime equipment". The bus trip reveals a side of Singapore rarely seen; the industrial powerhouse concealed beneath the effusive greenery that epitomises our international reputation. Chimneys belching forth smokes, mysterious lumbering behemoths of steel and oil-stained concrete heaping themselves towards the bitter blue sky - the inevitable price paid for by the captains of industry to forward the edifice of our economy.

KeppelFELS houses itself within the confines of a middling-sized office building. The clean lines that make this particular structure up contrast in stark relief against the surround - piles of dirty equipment, cranes, storage tanks, and most distinctive of all, the imposing silhouette of massive construction going on in the far horizon. The building itself is modest enough, and comfortable. The lobby was tasteful and welcoming. But our misgivings, on that first day; they fought stark and pitched battles against reason and emotion.

In any case there were three of us. I was unfortunate enough to be separated from either of them, conscripted into the vilifying role of office-helper; running around revolutionizing the filing system and generally wrecking havoc among the dust-bins and the filing cabinets - now, that was my lot in life in those lost hours between dawn and dusk. Officially I'm in the HR (Human Resources) Department, but insofar as I can tell I've not been involved in anything but a level of work that may be classified as slightly better than "grunt." A whole day lugging around cumbersome grey-green employee reports and staring at black files and dank filing cabinets does much in dimming the mind; by lunchtime I invariably lurch around with the permanent fixture of a flustered and lethargic expression on my face. I almost seem to have an entire nation's personnel reports to re-file (now that's an Orwellian thought ain't it.) The going is arduous and I have 69 pages of microprinted names to comb through. Each entry in this unfortunate collection of names and occupations gives me the location of a certain file and instructions to where to relocate the particular file. There are approximately 3000 employees across these 69 pages; in two days I've completed about 20. Pages, that is.

Another one of my uplifting missions is to take those paper dividers you find in those filing cabinets, remove the numerical designations on them so they can be reused, and keep them. Again there are approximately 3000 of these dividers to finish.

And that's about it. For a wild half-hour on the first day I actually thought it was fun, to a healthily sane extent. I know better now.

Daniel and Weixiong have rather sedate office jobs. They're working together, utilizing the hated PeopleSoft and going about their unfathomable business, occasionally taking coffee breaks, sleeping in emptied rooms, playing minesweeper on their office desktops, and doing other useful miscellaneous tasks. Daniel has also taken to wasting SMSes on Hoe, and Hoe seems to take carthartic pleasure in venting his frustration (read his rant to get a better understanding of it.)

I suppose we are, to a certain extent, better off than Hoe is. He's alone, "free of familiar social contact for a two-kilometre radius", and he's sitting in an office cubicle undergoing slow torture as the ubiquitous and friendly sounds of your neighbourhood industry reverberate around him. I can't say for sure because honestly I don't really know the extent of his tasks, but Hoe isn't one to complain, and when he does, and does so to the extent he's doing so now, alarm bells would be a good sound to have.

Leon seems to have the best of it all, ironically. Even alone his primary activity seems to be partaking in online games as his co-workers fluster and flail about looking for things for him to do.

That's about it for now.

Hayley Westenra is good.

Corpsebride – Now 30% More Spoiler Free!

2005-10-19T23:03:00.000+08:00

Wesley’s getting married! Rawfl.

Tis the joyous time of year, after the exams, where we collectively venture forth and watch movies, flagrantly spending money, painfully accumulated by our parents over the course of the rest of the year, that could be used to buy more useful things, such as illegally harvested kidneys or slave-concubines. Or perhaps literary classics such as Amber Brown is Not A Crayon.

Yes, movies. Except that in the case of Corpsebride, it was more of a collection of still-ies. Each and every frame was painstakingly captured, one by one, by moving intricately painted scale models a fraction of an inch each time, culminating in what I must commend as one of the most stylized, intriguing and ultimately enjoyable “animated” movies of the year.

Many people bemoan the fact that the movie is only about an hour and fifteen minutes long, and “absolutely not worth Seven Dollars”. Well, lets do some math.

(/open calculator) Assuming that the movie runs at the bare minimum of 24 frames a second, that’s 24 x 60 x 85 frames, which is a whopping total of 122400 seconds . Giving about (and this is really the minimum) ten minutes a frame, that’s about 20400 man hours or 840 days! (/close calculator)

Now think of it this way. Assuming that your parents work as Chinese coal miners at a rate of about 1 USD a day (not including health insurance fees), and by buying that ticket you’ve spent about eight days of their salary, that’s still a miniscule fraction of what Tim Burton and Johnny Depp put into the making of this show! Value for money huh.

Corpsebride doesn’t strike me as cheesy. In fact, because of its novel concept and the undeniable charm of little plastic figurines, the show and its characters grow on you, so much so that the effect of *spoiler-ending* is irresistibly heartwarming. At the first meeting of the Corpsebride herself, one is, quite frankly, spooked. After all, not many people are charmed (or aroused, for that matter) by a decaying, rotting pile of flesh (other than perhaps our dear, albeit necrophilic, friend). But as we get to understand the rationale behind her actions, her needs and wants, and share the many sweet moments between her and Dan Dort, one cannot help but feel that in a way Dan Dort is far more suited to her than that shallow, mortal-plane-dwelling creature who he is officially betrothed to.

As many critics are quick to point out, the underworld is garishly lit and decorated, whereas the mortal city is grey and drab. As it should be, since (and I quote), “everyone is just Dying to get there!” Literary analyses aside, this whole notion of death being more attractive than life (what with skeletons doing the can can) crafts an overwhelming sense of absurdity. This, combined with a Confucian skele-sage, a bone-dog (I wonder what he gnaws on, then), and lots of magic potion, is, quite simply put, a recipe for hilarity.

The lyrical nature of the movie is also endearing in the extreme. From the beginning the movie is introduced with a decidedly queer rhyme about the town. The songs, far from reaching a Titanic style soppy crescendo, are actually an eclectic mix of Adams Family and Elton John, contributing greatly to the gothic and yet intentionally cartoon setting. Also, there is something inherently appealing about a drunken skeleton jamming on a keyboard. (Oh dear, I fear I too am lost.)

Anyhow, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen something this cute, artsy, funny and yet touching, without sacrificing a significant portion of the female lead’s clothing. And some of the plot. Hell, this movie is truly something to Die for.

(and for SOME dumb reason I keep typing Corpsebride as Corpsebridge. I’ll post my little sketch of a CorpseBridge once I find out how)

Ecumenism

2005-10-19T19:57:00.000+08:00

We are an organization with a religous bent. The teachers advocate religous proselytization. In fact, they advocate it to the point of exhaustion, with REWs, day-to-day discourse, devotions, chapel. Whatnot.

Fully two-thirds of the hitherto unconverted, whether determined agnostic, atheist, or just plain apathetic, have abandoned their erstwhile dispositions to take up the new faith, (to them, that is) one that offers some unfathomable appeal. Once converted, they go to it with unrestrained fervour, preaching their newfound wellsprings of religious exultation to the skies. Christianity is almost as fully outspoken, aggressive, and intolerant as a wildfire in the harmattan. There is something about Christianity that releases the dam of restraint, once one has fully embraced it.

It may not be as xenophobic or insecure as it was in the Middle Ages; nevertheless, the harmonious blend of fervour and reward inherent in Christianity has made it one of the most successful ideological contagions of human history. Unlike the encompassing serenity of Buddhism (which has become a religion, whether or not it claims to be merely philosophy) or the unyielding and unbending natures of Islam and other such religions, Christianity thrives on the force of passion. Islam's most passionate adherents strap bombs onto themselves and make martyrs for a misguided cause - that passion hardly helps Islam's image. Islam, itself, like so many other religions, is identified with certain races. Christianity used to be, but with the British Empire and other European powermongers, Christianity has lost its racial bias and has proliferated into the world's first truly multiracial religion.

But the Christian mindset is inherently bigoted. This is an imperative of all religions, of course, if that were not so religions would not be what they are. But Hinduism preaches tolerance. The tenets of Christianity do not preach religious tolerance. Christianity advocates ideological and religious domination in order to achieve the ultimate ends of their purpose. Here, in Singapore, especially, that mindset cannot be allowed to persist.

Christianity is but one among many, and who is to say that one of them isn't true, or doesn't hold the reins of a greater nobility or purpose than Christianity? What is Truth that Christians preach, smug and sure in their Biblical assurance? Why is their creed necessarily Truth? And what right have they to push their opinions onto others, preaching their own Truth at the expense and exclusion of all other beliefs?

What right have they to condemn the teachings of religions as old and as wise as they to the dustbin of Untruth? What right have they to assert their complete ideological and moral superiority over other religions? Only among themselves, but not unto others who do not share their belief.

So please, when preaching, respect the teachings of others.

Drawings 04

2005-10-14T16:12:00.000+08:00

Hops Onto the Bandwagon

2005-10-14T15:42:00.000+08:00

{Blog admin would like to remind Kevin that CAPITALS play an important role in good English. Thank you.}

I've noticed that Karan and Colin have posted about their emancipations. Therefore I'll post about mine too !

The End Of The Examinations. A Narrative.

{

*dramatic hoeshua-style matrix quote*
Confucius he say~! Every beginning must have an end.

The most significant, memorable, and unexpected event of this bout of examinations actually occured AFTER the papers themselves. Due to unfortunates (such as karan) who had to make up for exams they skipped (in favour of the infinitely more torturous hindi o levels), and the various geologists-to-be, we had to be herded around like a...herd of docile, grass munching bovines, to ease the return of desks to the classrooms.

I will never forget standing behind my desk (i was in row three) , at the direction of that great conductor, Mr Chew, watching as my comrades in arms passed, one by one or in groups of five or so, from the gep side to the...um...other side. Anyhow, this created an adverse psychological effect, akin to the old soviet commisar scare tactic of executing every other poor conscript to "encourage" the rest. except that in this case, the "rest" would consist of no more than five people (come to think of it, it was more like lining up for the gas chamber). Or perhaps sending cows to the slaughter! or was that sheep. nevermind.

Okay, bad analogies aside, the meatshields in front of me disappeared slowly but surely, like a poor guard unit facing the awful wrath of the tyranids. Before i knew it, i was first in line, quivering in my boots (probably more because of the fact that the auditorium was, as always, cold as hell (or heaven, since its got to be cold so high up there) than any fear i may have painted so far).

It was at this moment that Conductor Chew wrenched his jaws apart to pronounce my sentence. "All the rest of you are free to leave, your work will be done by 4.13". Like.. What? Confused glances were exchanged between the survivors, before reality dawned on us, and we smugly strutted out of the auditorium, providing encouraging kicks for the serfs as they carried our desks for us.

Anyway, as josh put it, we're "1= 12 3 3!". (This translates roughly into Merdeka for all you un133t speakers).

So, back to Liberation. Sudden, sweet liberation. we've deposed that dictator on stage at last! (haha hi mr chew). No oil wells here though

}

***

To my great consternation, however, we ended up having to wait for everyone else, including the 4.9ers, since we had planned an outing with them. damn you, poetic justice! *shakes fist*

Transit

2005-10-13T13:57:00.000+08:00

It's hard to believe, but exams really are over. But gone is the great release of tension that accompanies the end of the last paper. Stepping out of the hall into a world covered in a bleak sky, I wonder why the bright sun of liberation stays hidden above the clouds.

Don't mistake me; I'm not commenting on my feelings, which are, predictably, relief combined with anticipation. But the capricious weather is so moronically, well, capricious, that it puts a dent on the post-exam euphoria that I inevitably feel. I do feel deflated, however. The vast mad mugging climaxed in the showdown on tuesday, where the twin giants of core math and history merged in apocalypse. Apocalypse was averted, fortunately, and after the last word was written the exams were effectively over. After all, only one subject remained, spread out in two days. So all the tension radiated into formless limbo, and my unconscious was torn as to whether to impose upon my unwilling mind euphoria or concentration. I admit it seemed to choose the former, which, of course, resulted in the tension evaporating slowly instead of in the pleasurable rush of more traditionally-scheduled exam timetables of yester (and yester-yester^n) year.

Today didn't exactly help either, because I found that there is a large possibility of me losing at least five marks over an unfortunate oversight. So, packing up, listening with half an ear to Mr Chew's last moments of unconditional omnipotence up on stage, some of that post-exam relief vanished upon hearing the (suprised?) exclamations of "no, I didn't get that answer" several times over in unanimous ferocity, whereupon I felt a strong temptation to keel over and beat the ground with my fists.

(I shall now use this oppurtunity to state that my POD textbook was also unfinished, but that it now is and is inside the pigeonhole.)

But Locke did postulate that the universe is empirical in nature, so as all empirical observation indicates, the exam is over, and so I'll not need to worry about trying to convince myself that I've been most productive to-day. But that ideally remains an idealized day-to-day resolution. I'll keep it in mind.

Bouquet

2005-10-07T13:01:00.000+08:00

As I walked through the open door, I saw
A bouquet of flowers - cast upon
The dank brown listless pungent maw-
Of a dustbin, yes, you think in scorn.

I stopped and stared. Whatever thus?
The flowers were wreathed with silken class.
So fresh and new, but cast forlorn
Spirit and body asunder torn.

What spirit of Cupid has wreathed
Has unweaved. Unraveled
In the silken caress that falls apart
And the bared flowers, born again, start.

Odyssey

2005-10-05T18:12:00.000+08:00

In the midst of exams now. Its the repeating cycle of year after year that makes me wonder whether foresight really is that useful after all. For after October the 13th there will be only a vast relief and euphoria, and in two short months the cycle will begin again.

What really matters is that ability to focus on the present.

Only 8 days span the yawning gulf between where I stand and the other side, with its promises of bounty. 8 days is not usually a long time. Einstein was right in more ways than one.

In other news, Black and White 2 was supposedly released yesterday, but the official sites still claim that BandW2 still lies in those large brown cartons, being uploaded to cargo transports.

Ah, the post-exam time.

Sword of the Night

2005-09-16T23:00:00.000+08:00

I am the shadow in the darkness.

He stood by the outcropping and gazed upon the waning sickle of the moon overhead, wreathed in wispy night clouds. He felt his callused hand twitch upon the sleek black Heckler Koch holstered by his side. The air shimmered with invisible tension. The smell, that smell...he could almost taste it on his tongue.

Tonight held the greatest oppurtunity for him. His trade had oftimes involved actions that changed the course of history, but the power that came with it never attracted him. It was the chase that fascinated him. The chase, and something more...intimate that even he knew not, and dared not know about. A seed that was anathema to his entire nature.

As an assassin.

He had no name. He did not exist. His life was tied to a clandestine agency whose very name was not revealed to him, whose payments were invariably in cold cash. Untraceable. He had no ties, no acquaintances, no friends, relatives, loved ones. He had never had them. He stood there that night, waiting, even as his keen sense of timing counted the drawling seconds that led to his target acquisiton, and tried to recall, to reach his tendrils of faltering memory into the miasmic past.

Nothing. It was as if he had never been a child. That blood had always been on his hands, dripping red life from innocence. Money? Self-justification? Envy? Or satisfaction in skill? The assassin did not know what made him kill. But when he saw the expressions on his targets after he had dispatched them - those rare times they had remained alive long enough to display emotion - he had seen flashes - flashes of kindred kind and shared sorrow flitting like an ephemeral star through their dying gazes in the seconds before they had died.

With each successive kill, the skill and the prestige - at least among the ones in the know - had increased. But so had that...strangeness that made that vague sense of self-doubt well in him.

They had families. He had never known family. And if he died right now, right then, there would be no one to mourn. An unmarked grave, an innocuous death no more tragic than the falling of a single leaf.

It was time, however. They were approaching, in corcodance with the assassin's predictions. Almost unconsciously the assassin made himself a mental note of approval, and slipped down, movements graceful and quick as a pouncing cat's. The undersides of his boots made no sound against the wall as he scaled down with incisive intent.

The target approached, as always oblivious, as always unwary. Flanked by two bodyguards, he considered no possibility of danger to his person. The assassin had done a considerable amount of homework on his target; understanding his impulses and security measures was no easy thing even then, but he had done the best he could do.

From his perch, he tracked his target with his eyes, recalling all he had read. He was outspoken, a politician of the masses. No skeletons in his closet - a rarity. But his messages and rhetoric made him dangerous to people in some circles, especially in a nation as fraught with tension and intrigue as this.

He had a family. A wife who by all accounts loved him well, two young children. He was going to kill this man who gave more to society than he could ever have, this man, who, had he been a citizen of this nation, he would have shouted with the rest to bring to office, and he was going to kill him for...what? Money?

He knew that he would kill this man if he chose to. But would he? Could he deny the purpose of his existence for this sentimentality?

Emotion is the greatest weakness of the assassin. He knew that mantra well. But what if emotion was not the weakness, but the strength? Would not killing be that quintessential weakness that humanity could do better without? He had never thought this way - his training had involved the truth - which was truth more often than not - that the people he dispatched were better off dead, corrupt, slobbering inept men who lived off the juices of excess. But this man was not.

The target was approaching, close now. The assassin's hands twitched on his gun as the dilemma wrestled with his resolve. His head filled with flashes, images of a funeral and gray and green and black, and the weeping of three whose his actions would affect the most.

But he was an assassin. Trained against such emotion. He could not abide such weakness, for that weakness meant that his life would be a failure, fraught by weakness and sin. It was his ideal, his driving force, and the only bride he would take. His mind clouded by guilt and anger, hesitation and a rabid desire to kill.

Closer. What would he do? Closer.

Dispatch.

The assassin did not have the time to think. He drew his Heckler Koch and held it with one hand even as he used the other to pivot around a bar, lowering himself gently on the ground. Then he drew his knife in his other hand and crept up behind the bodyguard in the rear. The arm with the gun closed like a vice around his abdomen even as the knife sliced a bloody rictus at his throat. Choked on blood, the bodyguard made no sound, and swiftly as a snake the assassin raised his gun while supporting the bodyguard in his arm and took two quick silent shots - one at the brain stem, the other at the heart, for safety. The man jerked and collapsed. The assassin knew he was dead. And soon even the bullets dislodged in his body would dissolve into unassuming constituents of water and glycerin. The assassin slipped away before the other bodyguard could turn and see him.

But something happened that had never happened before. As the assassin fled, he was weeping. Quiet tears that had not fallen for so long, held by a stony heart that never shied from killing. At first he tried to push them away, for tears would admit that he had done something wrong.

But the irony of it did come through. He had done something wrong. And the tears flowed freely and unashamedly thereafter.

***

A grave filled with regret stood before him, penitient in its regard. The assassin's weathered face held regret and deep-shadowed guilt. From his tree he had for an hour watched a woman and her two young children stand and mourn by the graveside. They would never see him in the flesh again. And their father would never be in their hearts. After they had left, the assassin knew it was his turn. But mourn for whom and what, he did not know. His association with the man he'd killed did not extend to grief at loss. Rather it was the grief for something else.

It was not grief for the man he'd murdered that filled him with the sharp pang of sorrow. It was grief for his own soul, lost long ago in the blood of his first kill.

He laid the chrysenthemums gently down on the soft grave dirt. And left.

Ponderings

2005-09-08T23:20:00.000+08:00

The tree-lined boulevard was beauty incarnate in the honeyed light of sunset. The jumbled sounds of people and birds created a wonderfully restive background amidst the summer wind.

The pathos of decadence, thought Roland Blaine as he strode down that great dusk-lit promenade, swinging his long arms to and fro. The wind crept into the recesses of his crisp jacket, bathing him in inebriating cold. Nice feeling, cold. Curious. Perhaps, when winter finally descended in all her pure white splendour he knew he would think exactly the opposite thing. Blaine smiled, a secret, knowing smile. How the mind justifies the present. How it forgets the past.

A sudden, wild bout of daring and pugnacity caused him to tear his jacket wide open, exposing him to the elements. The sudden icy shock knifed into his innards. He sighed, trembling, heavy, masculine eyes half-lidded with brooding introspection as he casually ignored the incredulous stares around him. He tolerated the cold with steely resolve. Blaine was not a man used to the cold of this far above the equator. But he smiled at the thought of even revealing that particular truth to any who knew him in this baroque city. The very conception filled him with an invigorating terror of his own personal ruination.

Telling them. Now, that would be telling. He savoured it a few more moments, and let the terrible, numbing thought slip away, and closed his jacket, resisting the urge to sigh in relief as warmth once again enveloped him. How sweet air must be to a asphyxiating man. How unpleasant it seems to me now, dry and cold. "Such a wondrous paradox the world is," he muttered under his breath.

Lifting his gaze up to the rarefied heights, Blaine espied gulls leaping from rooftops, wings catching the air and lifting them amidst the autumn currents. His eyes slithered caressingly down the marble-and-brick facades, the carved finery and erstwhile fashions of the art deco and avant garde. They were stark in the lilac-orange glow of the setting sun. Blaine's thoughts wandered to a conversation he'd once had with one of the ubiquitous and distressingly mediocre scolaire of this decadent métropole.

"You do not do well disregarding the power of art," he had said, scowling over a cup of chocolate. His accent was thick and he drawled his syllables in that languid fashion so unique to bored aristocrats. "Art gives colour to life."

"And inequality," Blaine had replied. "Art is a tool of blackmailers and manipulators. Love for art is a weakness that cannot be tolerated. Art is a crutch for fools and cripples, a means of attributing ersatz beauty to things that have none."

The scolaire looked vaguely insulted. "You are a fool for saying that. A fool."

Blaine's eyes, dulled with a filmy boredom, strayed toward an exquisitely crafted dagger hanging by the wall. Its hilt was carefully carved with intricate motifs, and ornate gold scrolling adorned its ivory sides. Blaine toyed with the idea of grabbing the dagger and driving the sweet point through the scolaire's eye. His lips twitched into a faint and mocking smile. It would be an interesting challenge. How would he hide the body? He pictured dragging the limp body of the dead scolaire to the fireplace and letting him burn there. Too crude. He grew tired of the train of thought. I have not the time for such.

The scolaire's gaze was still fixed upon him. His countenance betrayed hidden suspicion and contempt. Abruptly, Blaine stood. He smiled briefly at the surprised scolaire, baring his teeth in a rictus. "I will take my leave," he said.

"But...what about the rendezvous?" the scolaire had sputtered. But Blaine waved him off with a flick of the wrist. "Invent your own excuses."

The scolaire was outraged. "This is highly irregular, monseiur Beauvais!"

Memory faded into the vistas before his eyes. "I follow no man's schedules," he whispered, echoing his last words to the scolaire before he had exited the opulence of the manse.

Unbeknownst to Blaine the sun had set, and the sky was beginning to darken. The antique street lights began to turn on, one by one. The boulevard, far from retreating into the morass of night, was transformed - from sedate walkway to scintillating, eclectic mix of high and low culture - men in tuxedos rubbing shoulders with buskers in rags, women in glittering accoutrements set against drab matrons on nightly strolls.

Blaine detested the thrum of nocturnal activity. It always seemed a waste of human life. Not that he treasured it; life translated into work, work into power. And power did not suffer being squandered.

A slight commotion aroused him from his reverie. He paused to look, his face a studied mask of studious detatchment. In one of the side streets an elderly crone was whispering animatedly to an enthusiastic lady of the botiques. The victim was forty-ish, clad in expensive but tasteless clothing, and decked with heaps of garish but cheap jewelry. The crone was clearly enjoying herself. Blaine saw that she was a fortune-teller, one of thos skilled but desperate con-artists, who, bereft of their insecure contracts in two-bit troupes et ménageries, resorted to furtive prowlings at such streets of plenty, in the futile hopes of ekeing out a miserable existence in the occasional snaring of a gullible but wealthy street patron such as this particular specimen that Blaine beheld presently.

The crone held a card in her hand. As she laid it down on the worm-eaten table a cackle escaped her shriveled lips and the gullible matron squealed in excitement, flapping her flabby arms about. Blaine wanted to kill them all, rend them and cast their shattered remains into the deep winding river that coursed through this cursed city. The repulsive sight was almost too much for him to bear. Without thinking, he had already taken half a dozen steps towards the two women when he stopped himself, checking himself in disgust.

I have... more pressing priorities.

Blaine rarely lost his composure. But a few years in this accursed city, monument to art and the decadence that came with it - a few years was enough to drive a man insane. Seething inside, face still a still visage of tranquil, he turned away.

But a seed of a thought captured his soul. He stopped in his tracks and looked up at the moon. A bubble of mirth, springing from some source unfathomable as the tides of night, erupted forth from his lips. They pulled back from his mouth, and Blaine's mouth opened, the sounds of laughter pouring, the tears coming even as he sank down to the ground, bubbling with painful and irrational, useless mirth that he could not control. It was like art, the laughter.

And as passerbys stopped and turned to stare at the strange scene before them Blaine wanted to scream at them. Don't you see? Don't you understand? This is you? This is your work! But the laughter could not stop. Before their incredulous stares Blaine seemed to waver in form, and faintly they could sense the incorporeal visage of generations past, joining in a gargantuan crescendo of mirth.

But laughing at what, no one knew.

Drawings 03

2005-09-07T23:37:00.000+08:00

Referred to a source.
Said character in question is Nina Fortner.

Housing in Development

2005-09-03T16:03:00.000+08:00

Decomposition, you moribund source of
Composites. Now defunct impresario
Palls of holly decked with festive cheer. Cough
Up your secrets where phlegm cannot follow

“No, really, you may stay, with your flagelle
I insist on tumescent jugulars”
Queerly! Five fathoms down is the Gazelle
On tenterhooks with twenty Regulars

Lapis lazuli, vacuum packed diamond
Next door is one in a brick enclosure
Upgrading his stay. I believe a frond
Would never be unparallel or sure

It’s cracked, how honeycombs do misconstrue
Silly saccharine upon sick fondue

My first attempt at poetry after that haiku :) I'll work on being less bombastic/cryptic

A Melodramatic New Entry

2005-09-03T16:00:00.000+08:00

Ello, ‘tis Toitle
I have a shell and four legs
Quite Queer, is it not

Drawings 02

2005-09-02T18:04:00.000+08:00

More drawings.

Drawings

2005-09-01T17:30:00.000+08:00

I've been trying to draw faces too. lol.

I had reference for the second face.