Rumination II

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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

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

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.