Saturday night: My musical (re)education began with a Tortoise album -- It's All Around You -- and then games of hangman, while waiting for Poptart to begin at RNDM (which is supported by the NAC, interestingly enough).

Nostalgia everywhere: blasting out the speakers, vibrating through the body, making people jump like pogo sticks as they cry out the lyrics.

Ah well. So much for my optimism.

For computer and video games, competing solely on processing power and other technical aspects is leading to diminishing returns. Larger armies of programmers and higher costs don't translate into higher profits than from previous games. And squeezing the lifeblood out of programmers should never be an option -- shame that certain large companies are abusing their staff now.

How about giving players as much ownership and control in the game as possible, but without requiring hard-coding? How about software that reacts to the player's decisions on its own instead of having instructions preprogrammed?

Now, suddenly, his creature could walk. And he did so -- he walked right out of the sea and onto the land. This incredible moment in the history of evolution was made even more remarkable by the technology behind it: the game had figured out, procedurally, how a creature would walk if it had three legs (it was a kind of lopsided gait, if you're curious, with three steps: left, right, then middle.) No 3D modeler created the creature, and no 3D animator was required to make it move around -- it was all created out of a gamer's whim and a computer program smart enough to make it work.

--
Will Wright Presents Spore... and a New Way to Think About Games

On that day, my inheritance began to form -- the blue of Kashmiri sky which dripped into my grandfather's eyes; the long sufferings of my great-grandmother which would become the forebearance of my own mother and the late steeliness of Naseem Aziz; my great-grandfather's gift of conversing with birds which would descend through meandering bloodlines into the veins of my sister the Brass Monkey; the conflict between grandpaternal scepticism and grandmaternal credulity; and above all the ghostly essence of that perforated sheet, which doomed my mother to love a man in segments, and which condemned me to see my own life -- its meaning, its structures -- in fragments also; so that by the time I understood it, it was far too late.

-- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

My alma mater's anime club held a mini anime-convention on campus last month. If any of you guys are reading this, I hope UChi-Con went well. I'm ashamed at how easily you have come to eclipse us old blokes.

/sniffle!

And I don't know how you managed to get Student Government to give you money for a video games club, but long live The Order of the Blistered Thumb!

No longer is my ORD just a number I rattle off to strangers, but something that causes ripples of anticipation inside me now. I have to go for a very minor operation, which should give me 2 weeks MC, around which I will wrap the rest of my leave. I should be able to effectively leave the army at the end of the month.

Most people I know still find work a chore, but one of my friends has made a career switch. She's now bursting with the energy and enthusiasm that was once bottled up inside an office suit. Her joy is infectious.

I finally landed the job I wanted.

Programming for the Fantastic Film Festival (24 -30 June 2005 -- don't forget it folks!) seems to be doing well. That's just the beginning, but it bodes well.

I'm discovering new music, films and books every week. I still cannot wring the words to write adequately about them, but the thrill of discovery is its own reward for now.

And best of all -- I believe the one I like, likes me too.

It's been a while since I felt this happy. Of course I wonder what will happen next, but I figure there will be time later to mope or laugh. For now just let me soak, soak in the sheer potential of it all.

Here's an article from The New York Times (which, unlike a certain Southeast Asian newspaper, offers their well-written articles for free) about how Woody Allen's new films are unfairly compared to the ones that made him an icon.

While it's hard to deny that Mr. Allen's output has been uneven of late, his failures and near-misses seem to provoke a disproportionate - even a neurotic - reaction precisely among those most disposed to admiration. What if we - and by "we" I mean the legions (or at least dozens) of young (or at least gracefully middle-aged) intellectuals (or at least newspaper readers) with battered used-bookstore copies of "Getting Even" and "Without Feathers" at their bedside and long passages of dialogue from "Sleeper" and "Love and Death" in their heads - go to the new Woody Allen movie because we want to feel let down, abandoned, betrayed? We are all aware that the man has problems of his own, but what if the dissatisfaction we feel with his work is, at bottom, our problem?

-- from Why We Won't Let Woody Allen Grow Up

Speaking of which, I finally managed to watch Annie Hall last Friday. Liked it a lot.

Have some New Order! Krafty music video.

The Straits Times will soon charge for access to their online edition. Wonder whose bright idea that was. Anyway, have removed all the links that led there.

And the weather forecast for today: scorching sunshine as usual, with clips from Daft Punk's new album Human After All and a chance of young-at-heart senior citizens in Basement Jaxx's Oh My Gosh.

Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel: Never Let Me Go.

Am rereading The Catcher In The Rye. It didn't make much of an impression on me the first time I read it, back in JC. I remember wondering what all the fuss was all about -- I couldn't understand why Holden Caulfield was acting the way he did, or even empathise with his restlessness and confusion.

I was a teenager, but I didn't know I was one.

Finished Compañero on Friday, over over-fried tahu goreng and green tea. The afterword is long and rambling, and basically attributes Che's enduring myth to the extraordinary confluence between his life and the pervasive mix of outrage and idealism of the sixties. Just as that era failed politically and is now significant only for historians and for cultural symbols, so has Che become a icon for t-shirts, posters and other paraphernalia.

I saw a typical example on the train yesterday. A girl was wearing an olive-green t-shirt with Alberto Korda's famous photo on the front. On the back was printed a short biography of Che with a few typos and an odd turn of phrase or two ("revolutionary bird"?).

The forms may be similar but in the years between Feltrinelli's first poster and that girl's t-shirt much has changed. The symbol is no longer connected with the source. My brother has a t-shirt that has a superimposed gas mask that obscures the Korda photo. I saw a t-shirt in Bangkok that pasted Che's likeness on a DJ while Mao's flabby face graced a table. Perhaps this is history's fate for failed causes: that icons that once inspired loyalty, passion and fear in people no longer do so.

There's nothing to be sympathetic or sorry for. If these symbols do have meaning for people today it is only through tenuous links to a vague rebelliousness that isn't rooted in any real phenomena -- perfect for selling things. And someday, even those will pass.

It is said that just before the departure, Che and Fidel held their last private conversation while sitting on a log in the ravine of San Andrés. An official from the Interior Ministry who attended the training program but was excluded from the mission at the last minute overheard part of their conversation, and deduced the rest from their body language. Castro did the talking, while Che was sullen and withdrawn; Castro was vehement, Guevara quiet. At last Fidel ran through all the problems, both inherent and circumstantial, in the Bolivian expedition. He emphasized the lack of communications, Monje's hesitations, the organizational weaknesses of Inti and Coco Peredo. He intended to dissuade Guevara, or at least induce him to postpone his trip. Both finally stood up, gave each other several slaps on the back: less than blows, more a hug. Fidel's gestures revealed his desperation at Guevara's stubbornness. They sat down again for a long while, in silence. After a while, Fidel got up and left.

Salman Rushdie wrote this article in response to a proposal by the British government to ban "incitement to hatred on religious grounds". A hard-hitting defence of "freedom of speech", and a call to reflect on the essence of that concept.

The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it's a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

-- Salman Rushdie, Defend The Right To Be Offended

So now that we're really in a new year, it's time to look back (again): Top 11 Writing Trends of 2004

Throughout 2004, American filmgoing audiences demonstrated that they have little interest in supporting films that include any frank discussions of human sexuality, but they have absolutely no problem with going to see the goriest, scariest, most violent movies imaginable. Blood and guts, yes. Breasts and vaginas, no. One of the most successful films of the year, The Passion of the Christ, was also one of the most violent films in decades, but that didn't seem to faze heartland audiences one bit. However, those same pious filmgoers who didn't mind seeing skin flailed off of a human body greeted me outside of Kinsey, a quiet film about the secret sex lives of 1950s Americans, with flyers telling me that I would soon join the real-life Kinsey in Hell for supporting such a wicked movie.

The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved by Hunter S. Thompson

One more entry in my List of Depressing Stuff (TM)-- Prawns in a tank, little legs fluttering madly, ram themselves into the walls over and over again.

Cute, desperate bunny sings his l'il heart out:

Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me.

(Ain't that the truth now /sniffle)

When I'd like to blog more frequently, I can't because there's no internet access at work for the time being. Unsurprisingly, we are all more "productive" now. For me anyway, there's more time to read.

Speaking of which, I came across a sentence in Compañero that made me want to hurl the book across the bus. Castañeda's talking about the inhumane costs of rapid industrialisation as undertaken by socialist regimes:

Mao's Great Leap Forward in China also had disastrous consequences, at a human cost intolerable in a Western country like Cuba.

Sheesh. I wonder if the author's a closet bigot?

Speaking of books, I missed the MPH sale on CNY weekend, but discovered to my delight that there's a 20% discount on many titles in the Routledge Classics line. I hope to start on my copy of The Culture Industry sometime this decade.

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."
-- Paul Erdos

Here's a suggestion to help raise our birth rates -- make 15th Feb a public holiday!

If you find yourself caught in love
Say a prayer to the man above
Thank him for everything you know
You should thank him for every breath you blow

If you find yourself caught in love
Say a prayer to the man above
You should thank him for every day you pass
Thank him for saving your sorry ass

If you're single but looking out
You must raise your prayer to a shout
Another partner must be found
Someone to take your life beyond
Another TV "I love 1999"
Just one more box of cheapo wine

Ah, I've been neglecting this blog. Has it been a week already? Happy Belated Lunar New Year to all!

The Music Junction near my place has boxes of random Europe-pressed CDs for sale at 3 for $10. Picked up a collection of Astor Piazzola pieces, Ladytron's Light & Magic and the OST to blaxploitation flick Three Tough Guys. The last includes Run Fay Run, which Tarantino used in Kill Bill Vol. 1.

Here's something to entertain you till the next post: E! Online's Top 10 List of Blaxploitation Films.

I've seen hardcover copies of Haruki Murakami's latest Kafka On The Shore around. Will wait for the softcover version.

Random House has set up a very nifty homepage for Murakami, including lots of links to article and online fan communities. About time.

Am reading Compañero. Casteñeda's indulges in florid prose too much though. Here's a sample of his literary whipped cream:

Now Ernesto Che Guevara would experience his true political rite of passage during those troubled months when the futile attempt of a decent Guatemalan officer to improve the dreadful state of his fellow citizens shattered against the inescapable polarity of the Cold War and the intransigence of the banana companies.

What I found most interesting was that Che only became politically aware in his late twenties, after he finished university in Buenos Aires. Much of his outrage towards social injustice arose during his travels as described in The Motorcycle Diaries, but the criticisms were mostly ethical or moral in nature. They mostly went along the lines of "X is wrong, how can the government allow this?" instead of attempting to analyse the processes through which these injustices were perpetuated.

I could be blogging. Or I could be spending time doing stuff. Just take my last post for instance. Typing those two paragraphs took about 20 minutes. I think I'm a pretty fast typist, but I edit and reedit my writing a lot.

I've been a fan of the Gundam War CCG for a long time, and I'm sort of excited that there's now a US version. This is supposed to be a direct port of the Japanese game, and it looks and plays much better than Bandai USA's pathetic first attempt at a CCG: the (thankfully) short-lived "MS War". Hopefully they won't mess this one up too.

I've just finished watching Ichi the Killer (Koroshiya Ichi) on DVD. Black humour, buckets of gore, and truly twisted characters. The last time my mind was set adrift in a sea of mind-numbing spectacle was End of Evangelion. It's coming back down to earth - slowly.

Thanks to Francis, we managed to get free tickets to last night's performance of Roman Tam and The Three Bears, the doublebill by Action Theatre. The first play, Pek Siok Lian's Between Chinas, was straightforward with a lacklustre script. Everything about Jean Tay's Everything But The Brain was better. The acting, the set design, the staging, the script. They're two extremely different plays -- the first dealing with abstract notions of how different parts of the Chinese diaspora deal with history; the second an intimate, intense examination of a daughter dealing with her father's impending death. Still, I wonder if director Krishen Jit didn't do much with Between Chinas simply because he couldn't with that straightforward, didactic script.

And at the end of everything, as the lights went up, Lim Kay Siu (in the audience with his wife Neo Swee Lin) castigated a Raffles Institution student for chatting on his handphone during the performance. Hope the kid learns.

Some left-leaning libertarian, some liberal, all Wannabe Lawyer.

Whenever someone asks me what makes me proud to be a Singaporean, I tell them about our public library system. And today there's one more reason for me to puff my chest out with pride:

National Library puts authors online

January 29, 2005

The National Library Board (NLB) has launched Singapore's only online repository of artistic works.

Called Nora, which stands for NLB Online Repository of Artistic Works, it is a collection of works by local contributors.

It is the first time a comprehensive collection of unpublished, and out-of-print artistic and literary works has been made available to the public online.

The authors include Ovidia Yu, the late Kuo Pao Kun, Lee Tzu Pheng, Stella Kon, Desmond Sim, Suresh Sharma and Felix Cheong.

The NLB hopes the database would help preserve the literary heritage of Singapore and provide a link to the past through the records of Singaporeans' experiences.

Other genres such as music and multimedia, as well as works in Chinese, Malay and Tamil will be added to the collection.

Nora can be accessed via www.elibraryhub.com.

TagBoard's been giving me too many problems. Have replaced it with Doodle Board instead.

I managed to catch Final Solution during the Bangkok Int'l Film Festival. The documentary on racial politics in Gujarat, India was blocked by censors here last year from the S'pore Int'l Film Fest (SIFF).

There was an informal Q&A with the director Rakesh Sharma after the screening. I've gotten round to posting the highlights at the SGFilm Blog, instead of catching up on precious sleep -- do drop by! Find out what Rakesh did to get around the ban on the film in India, what he thinks of politics, why he stopped making film in 1992, and other trivia about the documentary.

Dear NTUC Income: I don't want copies of your useless transport guide. If you seriously have extra money for this stuff, why don't you give your policyholders something they could really use -- like rebates?

I don't approve of using sex to sell things, mainly because it's the most unimaginative way to do so. But it does work; that's why "lifestyle magazines" are outdoing each other in hawking rauchy (and usually poorly written) pieces within their pages. That's still no reason for the Government to control what kids read, which is what the parents in this Today article really want when they demand a classification system.

People seem to confuse classification with control a lot, so they don't pick up doublethink like the MDA line that recent changes to the movie ratings system here has resulted in "greater choice". If there were no censorship at all, distributors and directors wouldn't have to balk at cuts to their films and not screen them here.

Control is the real issue. Classification is supposed to facilitate the control of distribution of a media, so it makes sense to ask how effective a classification system for magazines would be in determining whether kids can get their hands on them. A classification system for magazines will probably not be effective because:

1) Unlike film, magazines tend to have tight deadlines. There's a very short time between finalising content and going to print. A classification system will really screw up the operations of most magazines.

2) No-one will be able to agree on the criteria to use. These aren't blatant pornography like Hustler. How many risque articles is too many?

3) There are inherent difficulties in controlling magazine distribution anyway. Are policemen now supposed to make sure shopowners don't sell Cleo and FHM to 15-year olds? Will parents make their children rat on the aunty who sells newspapers outside the MRT station? How can you punish someone for buying a magazine?

Above all, children and teenagers already have enough spending power to buy their own magazines. Failing that, they borrow from friends (or even the library!). No to mention the torrents of exploitative material on the Internet. By the time the parents object, it's too late.

(See? And we didn't even have to bring liberalism into the counter-arguments this time.)

The internet terminal in my office gave up the ghost while I was away. Won't be fixed for a while. Which is a pity since that's where I'm at my most productive.

Will be blogging less for a while.

Back from Bangkok this morning. The flight was at 7.10am, so Dave and I didn't bother with a room. After dinner with his housemate and her friend (who were also in Bangkok, but for shopping and food), we headed to Don Muang airport and eventually ended up at a 24 hour pub there.

I've been blogging about the films I watched on the SGFilm blog. Please feel free to take a look there.

As for the non-film aspects of the trip, will probably talk about that later. As it is, I've yet to write for SGFilm blog about the last films I caught in Bangkok.

/yawn

Got Strike Three in the mail today. That means I'm out of the deployment game. The PSC roulette will be waiting for me when I return from Bangkok, I suppose.

Ah well. At least I don't have to worry about getting a job.

Dismantle an iPod Shuffle? Sure, why not?

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has plenty of references to J.D. Salinger's iconic Catcher in the Rye. The Laughing Man, the moniker of the main adversary in the series, is also the title of a short story he wrote. Read it here.

See? Anime can be good for you.

Called it a day after watching only 10 episodes of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex on Saturday. Must be old age.

Thanks to Neue Ziel from the SGFilm forums for the chance to poke around his house and gawk at his anime collection. (Hey hifiguy: he's got all of Patlabor on DVD!)

Too.... much.... to.... read. *coughcough*

*gasp*

Small, powerful, and inexpensive? But the Mac Mini is real. I am speechless with awe and wonder. When it's gonna get here?

A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible

National Library Book Sale today. I got there at about 5pm after interviewing a prospective student for the UofC, at Biopolis. By then most of the interesting stuff was probably gone, but when it comes to sales I trust in Providence to find something I like. It's less stressful than agonising over what I might have missed.

Anyway, the haul:

Karim Raslan, Heroes and Other Stories
Josef Skvorecky, Talkin' Moscow Blues
Ariel Dorfman, Death and the Maiden
Richard Robison and David S. G. Goodman, The New Rich In Asia

and a most serendipitous find in a Children's Fiction bin:

Jorge G. Castañeda, Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara

Now, where on earth will I find the time to read all these?

I'm now a contributor to the SGFilm blog, which Dave hasn't updated in over 2 months. I've since also changed the blog template and added a few touches of my own.

As for content, I think the blog should have a focus but I'm not sure what it should be. At the moment, I'm thinking of articles and comments on the Singapore film industry. Any other ideas?

Lush 99.5FM has been underwhelming. The station sells itself mainly on the dearth of advertisements and DJs. That is, no more than two ads back-to-back at any one time and only two DJs on the station roster - Chris Ho in the morning and Vivian Tan (of The Observatory) in the evening.

The fewer ads the better, but the station genuinely needs more good DJs. I'm talking about people who love the kind of music Lush allegedly supports, can introduce tracks and whip up interest in new and existing talent. Presently the only way to find out what's playing is to send a 50-cent SMS. At this rate Lush 99.5FM's only going to be good as an experiment in 12-hour-long background noise.

(Then again, none of our stations have any DJs like that. Should I be relieved for Lush?)

And while you're at it, hire real web designers for your website. It's ugly. Here, take a look.

If anyone's interested, the Mercy Relief sorting centre is in a former school. Get off at Kovan MRT station and walk down Lowland Road. Here's the tricky bit: the front gate is unmarked except for a crudely-stenciled "58" on it. There's also construction activity going on right outside, so don't let that fool you. Just remember that the school is at the bend in Lowland Road.

Don't bother asking the people who live around the area. They will all direct you to "Helping Hands" -- but they're also helping out with supplies for tsunami victims so it's all good. They stop work at 8.30pm though.

I was going up in the elevator and just between the first and second floors I felt that I was going to vomit up a little rabbit. I have never described this to you before, not so much, I don't think, from lack of truthfulness as that, just naturally, one is not going to explain to people at large that from time to time one vomits up a small rabbit.

-- Julio Cort�zar, Letter to a Young Lady in Paris

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

-- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

It's been raining all day as it did most of yesterday. The sky is still a flat pale gray and it's cold and wet everywhere.

Finally got round to watching the VCD copy of Musa that Teck Loon forced on me. As a film it's good - brutally realistic, great visuals and acting. But it's also depressing, nihilistic even, and watching endless blood and gore gets tiring very quickly. What I liked most was how the film explored how power relations between the officers and the non-commissioned ranks shifted as the group of Koreans is run ragged by their Mongol pursuers.

Finished The Tin Drum yesterday.

Getting home in the wee hours of New Year's Day was a pain. Took me 2 hours. Night buses were packed and wouldn't stop outside Zouk. Taxis wouldn't stop -- for some reason a couple turned on their "Hired" signs while approaching me, the bastards. Even the first MRT train was packed with sleeply revellers. I spent most of the trip plastered to the door.

Dimitri from Paris's set had been interrupted at about 2.10am and we were all herded outside for a "headcount" of some sort. They let us back in after about an hour, and while I did appreciate the reduced crowd Dimitri's music didn't appeal to me that much. Still, I only left a little after 5 with Vivian, who eventually gave up waiting for a cab and went back in.

New Year's Eve is overrated. I will spend it quietly this year.

Closing time
Every new beginning
comes from some other beginning's end

Lush 99.5FM begins transmission at 0725h, Singapore time, on New Year's Eve. That's odd -- thought they'd have a big party or something at night.

Kung Fu Hustle (Gong Fu) is good for laughs. Much of the movie really focuses on stars from kungfu flicks of yesteryear (the official website has cast bios) and Yuen Wo-Ping's choreography lets them strut their stuff while adding heft to the Matrix spoofs.

As expected in action flicks these days, there was lots of CG but thankfully used mostly to enhance rather than impress. It also packed plenty of film and wuxia references to please enthusiasts. I'm personally getting tired of Matrix spoofs though.

A love of violence and martial arts (Chow is a diehard Bruce Lee fan). Actors who made their careers in films of the 70s and 80s, particularly kungfu stars. Lots of references to other films, usually parodies. I'm surprised more people aren't comparing Chow's latest with Tarantino's Kill Bill.

I delivered myself unto The Machine for the second time, and for the second time I have been found lacking, and thusly chewed and spat out like gristle. This time it only took them 10 minutes.

Nah, haven't been feeling like blogging for a long while now. Still don't feel like blogging actually.

Here're some short cuts:

Ocean's Twelve tries to cram too much into one sitting at the expense of the style and panache that made its predecessor cool. The lines are still witty, and the camerawork is pretty, but the plot is even thinner than the first and the denouement is anticlimactic.

Finally managed to catch The Incredibles. Excellent stuff.

Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai) created a bit of a stir at Cannes when its 14-year old male lead won the Best Actor award. I didn't think Yagira Yuuya's acting was exceptional (although there is no doubt that he will grow into a Japanese hearthrob for thousands of young Japanese/Taiwanese/Singaporean Chinese girls), and considering that Fahrenheit 911 won Best Film at the same awards I can't help but wonder, well, what QT and Co. were thinking.

(And no, I don't think Tony Leung deserved the Best Actor award either. Shame on him for that infamous comment too!)

But that's a done debate. It's not a bad film.

Had a close-up look at the Nintendo DS today. Utada Hikaru on the ads was what first caught my attention, but with double screens, a stylus, an in-built microphone and wireless communication capabilities this little machine looks very cool.

Moreover, the launch game for the DS is the quirky Kimi no Tame Nara Shineru (which translates to I would Die for You). Another quality title from Sonic Team. Visually unique, fun to play, showcases what the DS is capable of and hints at the great potential embodied in this package.

All the talk by the Government about raising the retirement age is pointless when no-one will hire older people to begin with. Is this not obvious?

Finally, a voice of reason! And from the Director of Economics and Strategy at the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) and Vice-President of the Economic Society of Singapore (ESS), no less.

The Straits Times, Dec 17, 2004

Casinos: Economic costs as big as any benefits

By Yeoh Lam Keong
For The Straits Times

THE integrated casino resort project (ICR) has been proposed principally to re-energise Singapore's flagging tourism industry.

On its surface, the model looks seductive. Only 30 to 50 per cent of the project is supposed to be centred on gaming. The bulk of the revenues from the $2 billion investment, we are told, should, as in Atlantis or Las Vegas, come from an alluring infrastructure of high-end hotels, world-class entertainment, restaurants and convention facilities that would also synergistically benefit tourism as a whole.

Surely, the argument goes, if through ingenious regulation we can contain the worst excesses of the ICR's acknowledged social ills, we should be willing to step outside the box of our traditional caution and give it a spin?

The fact that Thailand, Korea and Macau are all planning to deregulate and/or further attract investment in this area gives added urgency to the project. Do we want to be left behind? Should we not, as Associate Professor Winston Koh of SMU, and others, have argued, also establish ourselves as serious players in the mega gaming/tourism sector?

Tempting

LIKE its high rolling namesake, the ICR project looks tempting. A much darker picture, however, emerges if one looks at its economic costs.

First, while the benefits are potentially large (Prof Koh estimates the ICR can add 0.3 to 1 per cent of GDP), the costs are equally big. Cost benefit studies of Australia's experience in gaming estimate a sum of between A$1.8 billion (S$2.3 billion) and A$5.6 billion on both the benefits and costs sides of the ledger.

Australian Productivity Commission (APC) listed the following among the main costs: Bankruptcy, loss of work productivity, job losses, police incidents, court cases, divorce and violence. The impact on family dysfunction and breakdown is obvious.

The APC found that 96 per cent of problem gamblers suffered from depression, 58 per cent have considered suicide and 14 per cent had attempted it. Half spent over 50 per cent of their income on their vice.

Problem gamblers may constitute only a tiny minority - typically, 1 per cent to 2 per cent of any population, according to Australian and American studies. But the multiplier effects of their pathology can be large. In Singapore, potentially 40,000 to 60,000 people may become problem gamblers. But between 120,000 and 180,000 family members may be indirectly harmed by their vice.

Economist call such impact 'negative externality'. The market is ill-suited in valuing 'non-price goods' or in regulating the negative social effects of certain kinds of economic activity. We know, for example, that it cannot satisfactorily price the benefits of 'clean air' or a 'green environment' or prevent pollution reaching excessive levels without regulation.

Similarly, the market cannot adequately price or limit the impact of gambling-related depression, poverty or suicide on a family. What is the true cost of family dysfunction and breakdown? The counselling charges paid by pathological gamblers hardly captures the full cost.

For this reason, economists who have done cost-benefit analyses of gaming have argued that its costs have been badly understated. Most analyses, using conservative estimates, have found the costs outweigh the benefits.

Can regulation reduce these costs? Can limiting access to casinos to high-rolling tourists or to rich citizens, for example, reduce the number of problem gamblers? Can't Singapore have its cake and eat it too?

Unfortunately, the economics of the gaming industry work against this.

To begin with, the bulk of most casinos' clientele tend to be local residents - usually 70 per cent to 80 per cent even in tourist-intensive locations like Australia or Genting, in Malaysia. Atlantis and Las Vegas, which rely principally on non-residents or foreign tourists, are not at all typical examples.

In Singapore's case, the greater the regulation of locals, the greater will be the implicit 'tax' on its ICR as compared to less regulated regional gaming establishments. Over time, the more intense the regional competition gets, the more financially unviable will local regulation become. After sinking more than $2 billion into such a project, there is likely to be increasing pressure to relax or dilute restrictions on local clientele so the ICR can be competitive with other casinos in the region, subject to fewer restrictions. The financial viability of the local casino may require the acceptance of high levels of local misery.

Unseen threat

IN ADDITION, the ICR, by its very nature, will pose an unseen threat to the very tourism infrastructure it is designed to energise. This is because ICR-type operations typically subsidise the hotel, entertainment and other facilities attached to the casino. Often, such facilities barely break even or may even lose money, but the project as a whole is supported by the gaming profits from the clientele that such facilities draw.

If the ICR is extremely successful, there may be a positive spillover into nearby hotels, restaurants, pubs or entertainment venues. But this would be the rare and lucky case. Statistically, 30 to 40 per cent of gaming facilities fail, with a large proportion surviving, but not very well.

It is in these more common cases that the ICR could become a Trojan horse, with a potentially destructive impact on the local hospitality industry because of its massive non-gaming infrastructure. Being heavily subsidised, these facilities could damage surrounding hotels, entertainment venues or convention places. Around Sky City, Auckland, for example, hotel rates have fallen around 10 per cent due to competition from the casino's cheap subsidised hotels.

In a booming hospitality industry with already high occupancy rates, this negative impact might be small. But with significant excess capacity, flagging tourist arrivals and already thin profit margins, the effect could be a harmful diversion of trade, loss of existing jobs and bankruptcies. Unfortunately, this is likely to be the situation we face today.

More worryingly, the subsidised infrastructure of the ICR could act as a distorting barrier to entry and investment in the high-end segment of the hospitality and convention industry that Singapore is seeking to develop further.

Such potential negative impacts typically do not feature in standard cost-benefit analyses. They are, rather, hidden financial and economic risks that are inherent in the nature of the ICR project itself.

Given these risks, to describe the ICR as an 'option' that Singapore might like to buy, as some of its defenders have described it, may be misleading. Instead, the project is perhaps more accurately characterised, in financial market parlance, as the selling of an 'uncovered option'. Besides the certain social costs and the big initial investment involved in purchasing this 'option', the total losses to the economy as a whole could be unexpectedly large, open-ended and extend over an indefinite time horizon, as in the case of the sale of an 'uncovered option' gone wrong.

Considering these risks, the question of whether there are alternative projects that could fulfil the same tourism objectives as the ICR naturally arise.

Here, one cannot help but feel that Hong Kong has chosen a better direction with its West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) development project.

The proposed mega development will cost $5 billion and is designed to enhance Hong Kong's position as Asia's premiere centre for the arts, culture and entertainment. The WKCD is also expected to generate 8,500 permanent new jobs.

That is better than the 1,500 to 4,000 jobs that the Singapore ICR is estimated to provide, with positive rather than negative social effects and genuine benefit to related service industries.

Just as importantly, together with Disneyworld, the WKCD could help brand Hong Kong as the leading family-friendly, sophisticated Asian international tourist destination. By comparison, what impact on Singapore's branding would the ICR have?

Would we not be diluting our tourism branding by moving closer to the niches occupied by gaming cities like Las Vegas and Macau? Is this what we want as a key part of our tourism strategy, let alone in setting the tone for Singapore's social policy?

ICR proponents argue that gambling of all sorts is already rampant in Singapore. Professor Peter Collins, Director of the Centre for the Study of Commercial Gaming in Britain, estimates that gambling per capita in Singapore is already among the highest in the world.

Establishing an ICR, its proponents argue, could capture some of the business now lost to cruises and foreign casinos, and raise tax revenues that can be used for social good as well as to rehabilitate the worst effects of problem gambling.

Regulation

FRANKLY, I find this argument rather weak. The existing scale of gambling is primarily determined by social policy and regulation rather than dictated by local consumer taste.

In regulated France, for example, spending on gaming forms only 1.3 per cent of GDP. Compare this to a similarly rich, but less regulated country like Japan, where 'pachinko' gaming turnover alone forms a whopping 6.7 per cent of GDP.

Unlike Japan, Singapore is not desperate for alternative fiscal revenues.

To my mind, the admittedly high existing per capita spending on gambling in Singapore is not an argument for establishing yet another gaming venue in the form of a legal high-end casino.

Rather, it is a much stronger argument for a careful review of regulation of existing gaming facilities - including legal 4D, 'football clubs' with their gaming machines and illegal gambling - as well as of the adequacy of counselling, education and community support for existing problem gamblers.

Although superficially compelling, the ICR project, with its dark and hidden costs, is a Faustian bargain. And as with most such bargains, the devil lurks in the details.

Do I want my children to grow up learning it's OK to gamble? Of course not; that's why I'm going to try my hardest to be a responsible parent and teach them that it's not OK. Which is a point these well-meaning but slightly silly people seem to have missed.

On the one hand, I approve of the Enlightenment-derived idea that people should have the opportunity to decide for themselves if they want to gamble or not, and that the Government should not shield its people forever from vices. On the other, I personally believe that the social cost of the casino will far outweigh any financial benefits it would bring to our little island. In way of empirical proof, I'm afraid all I can offer are the multitude of sociological observations that point out the harmful effects of casinos on the surrounding communities versus the pittance of reports on the benefits of casinos.

Let me try and approach this from another angle, with the aim of finding more solid ground. I don't think anyone will deny that with a casino at our doorstep, the number of people who will become gambling addicts will increase. So perhaps the real question should be: are our social services ready to handle more broken families, more troubled kids and more bankruptcies?

The front page of this morning's edition of Today out STs the ST. Hope it's not a precedent.

Here're more ways to waste time at work -- The Best Webcomics of 2004.

What they're playing now as test transmission is fun to listen to, but when's Lush 99.5FM actually broadcasting for real? I can't wait.

Not too many people know that Rich Dad Poor Dad is trash, and that Robert Kiyosaki is a shill. This is why. Some of John T. Reed's points aren't as relevant as others, but he builds a sensible and convincing case against this so-called guru.

As my brother and I agreed over prata, teh and deep-fried tofu on Sunday morning, some people just want to believe something. Anything.

Love is the answer, but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty interesting questions.

-- Woody Allen

Kafka writes, for instance, of officials who revel in their despotic power over petitioners, 'against their own will [loving] the scent of wild game like that'. Though he was the least ideological of writers, Kafka had an acute feel for the obscene intimacies of power. Hinted at in his striking metaphor [The Castle] is a bestial, predatory appetite in the officials, sometimes submerged, sometimes baring itself.

-- J.M. Coetzee, "Translating Kafka"

No, I didn't know Grace Chow before today. Even if she were still alive, I don't think I'd ever meet her though but that's a moot point now.

She wrote a book, and she blogged the last 10 days of her life as a cancer slowly claimed her.

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Speaking of dead authors, Goh Sin Tub's last book Walk Like A Dragon has somehow popped into my hands. I respect Goh for carving his own historical niche in the development of what passes for "Singaporean literature". He wrote concisely and clearly - in fact I studied his stories as models for English compositions in secondary school.

However, his work is too amiable and sedate to be memorable. Goh's historicity is one filtered through rose-coloured glasses thicker than glass Coca-Cola bottles. The plethora of praises from Government ministers and religious leaders that adorn the first few pages of the book are not simply an advertiser's gimmick. By being so uncontroversial, Goh has unfortunately become inconsequential.

Godzilla has a surprisingly distinguished pedigree. Sharing the Toho stable with the big green monster was famed director Akira Kurosawa, who at the time was producing some of his most acclaimed films. Toho's other big release of 1954 was Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai), and the studio regularly rotated actors and crew among its projects. The director of the original Gojira, Ishiro Honda, was a lifelong Kurosawa collaborator, and the film's haunting martial theme was scored by the eminent composer Akira Ifukube. "This is the period of the great Japanese film," says Mark Schilling, film critic of The Japan Times and the author of The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture.

Godzilla: Final Wars, just opened in Japan, is the famous monster's last hurrah. "Final Conflict" discusses the reasons for stopping the franchise, the possibilities for a resurrection (who knows?) and the significance of the very first Gojira.

Indeed, the first film, when viewed today after decades of lighter monster-movie fare, is shockingly brutal and unafraid to heap scorn on the Americans. The blame for Godzilla awakening from his ancient slumber is laid squarely on US nuclear weapons testing. Scientists investigating a Godzilla attack visit a hospital and take a Geiger counter reading of a healthy-looking girl in pigtails, and a grim knowledge passes between them - she's doomed to a slow death by radiation poisoning.

It's a welcome gesture that the Singapore Literature Prize is now awarded in 4 languages. I wonder how the organisers will cough up the cash though.

What I don't understand is how "Hwee Hwee Tan" could have possibly won. Mammon Inc is complete crap. I stated my reasons earlier, so if anyone wants to show me how that trash has more literary merit than the others on the shortlist, please, by all means.

I don't think I did well in my JLPT at all :(

I take no pleasure at all in saying I can now go back to reading without as much guilt.

One Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1955, when I was fifteen years old, I was mooning around our back garden in the suburbs of Cape Town, wondering what to do, boredom being the main problem of existence in those days, when from the house next door I heard music. As long as the music lasted, I was frozen, I dared not breathe. I was being spoken to by the music as music had never spoken to me before.

What I was listening to was a recording of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, played on the harpsichord [...]

-- J.M. Coetzee, "What is a Classic? A Lecture"

Really, this year's Asian Media Festival Film Showcase had paltry publicity. Maybe next year's will be better publicised at the very least.

Incidentally, it ended last Friday with Puteri Gunung Ledang.

Like any other legend, the one about the Fairy Princess of Gunung Ledang has quite a few variants, but the one used in Puteri Gunung Ledang is really a synthesis of elements from the main legend and others concerning Hang Tuah. It seems that the driving force behind the new fusion was a desire to suffuse the film with a universal appeal. There's nothing wrong with that, and this is not one of the Puteri Gunung Ledang's flaws.

The film is badly in need of more editing. It moves slower than a lame tortoise and many scenes could have been culled without affecting any narrative or character development. The acting is decent -- in fact Tiara Jacquelina is the main reason why I ultimately found the film watchable -- but the leads have zero chemistry whatsoever. The reunion scene was especially painful to watch. As for action, considering that this is the first time anyone in Malaysia is making something as big as this, the fights are good if slightly cheesy. The costuming is quite impressive as well.

I have to admit that the novelty of the whole thing was probably what kept me in my seat the whole time. Well, that and Tiara Jacquelina. Still, the film is a breath of fresh air in our Hollywood-saturated cinemas, and I think it's a pity no-one's picked this up for general release here yet. Besides, nature's sacrifice has already been made.

Remember the Sega Saturn?

Segata Sanshiro was a fictional character and parody of Sugata Sanshiro, a legendary judo fighter. He appeared in two dozen commercials by SEGA to advertise the Sega Saturn in Japan between 1997 and 1998.

Sanshiro was a Judo master that tracked down and beat up people who were not playing the Sega Saturn. His name sounds similar to the phrase "Sega Saturn shiro!" meaning roughly "You must play Sega Saturn!"

The ads are over the top, but are funny and entertaining. Watch some of them here.

Hmm... not quite how I should be preparing for JLPT, is it?

Oops. Guangzhou is a city. Guangdong is a province.

So much for my uni education.

Now that the rest of Marina Square is due for renovation, most of the shops still open there are having clearance sales of one sort or another. Discovered a small but decently-stocked book fair there, but they were closing up for the day so I couldn't truly browse. I did manage to grab the Vintage Classics edition of The Tin Drum that I've been ogling at Kinokuniya for ages. It was a steal at $6, even with a creased spine.

There were others that caught my eye; I'll definitely be going back.

There is no better evidence for the adage: "Fools and their money are soon parted" than the recently-concluded Singapore Idol.

As Ken Lim once pointed out, you don't need talent to be a successful pop star. I don't mean to detract from Taufik Batisah's win; only to help place it in perspective. Glitz and glamour are driven by equally illusory impressions of democracy and talent. For truth, look to the money.

But any trace of spontaneity from the public in official broadcasting is controlled and absorbed by talent scouts, studio competitions and official programs of every kind selected by professionals. Talented performers belong to the industry long before it displays them; otherwise they would not be so eager to fit in. The attitude of the public, which ostensibly and actually favours the system of the culture industry, is a part of the system and not an excuse for it.

-- Adorno and Horkheimer, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception"

Midnight Eye has a fascinating and informative article on early Japanese animation, showcased at this year's Pusan International Fantastic Film Festival (PIFan):

In a year which is surely going to be remembered as a high-water mark for Japanese animation, PIFan decided to celebrate this most popular aspect of Japanese pop culture not only with screenings of Mamoru Oshii's recent cyberpunk stunner Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, but also a bold selection of seven programs screened under the title Pioneers of Japanese Animation: From Tekobo to Momotaro. I say bold, because most of the films screened were made during the time when Korea was under Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945). Given that Korea only lifted a long-term ban on Japanese cultural imports in 1998, the Korean reaction to these works was surprisingly appreciative.

Look out for the discussion of the intricate links between wartime propaganda and Japanese animation in the 1930's and 40's, in Part 2 of the writeup.

I turn my PC on, and whoosh 3, 4 hours of my life go by. And it's not like I'm doing anything productive on it either.

I should just not switch on my PC.

Most of the action in The Polar Express consists of roller-coaster rides every five minutes (look for a Polar Express ride at a theme park soon). The animation's extremely detailed and smooth enough, but the film also has the creepiest elves and spookiest Santa ever. Look out for some very trippy moments, including a ride down a gargantuan gravity well, a curious black-white pairing (the engine room scene is classic Riggs and Murtaugh) and other movie parallels.

Julio Cort�zar (1914 - 1984)

Argentine writer, one of the great masters of the fantastic short story, who has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges. Many of Cort�zar's stories follow the logic of hallucinations and obsessions. Central themes in his work are the quest for identity, the hidden reality behind the everyday lives of common people, and the existential angst. The author's debt to the French Symbolism and Surrealists has been demonstrated in a number of studies. Unlike Borges, Cort�zar became a political radical who was involved in anti-Peronist demonstrations and supported the Cuban revolution, Allende's Chile, and Sandinista Nicaragua.

If you haven't been there yet SoundBar is a small nook on the ground floor of hip The Gallery Hotel, and there's outdoor seating that spills out across the patch of lawn to the river where you have a nice view of HDB flats and a BP station.

Crowded, but expected of Heineken Green Room Sessions since their objective is branding/selling as many bottles of brew as possible (also the reason why NSmen and teachers never get invites, but they should seriously reconsider teachers). Moreover, there were print and (mediocre) radio ads too.

Anyway, Fantastic Plastic Machine was in full swing when my friend and I arrived (yes, we were late :( ), and the small area in front of the DJ console was packed tighter than sardines and hotter than a greenhouse.

With regards to music: he played house and latin mixes, throwing in remixes of his tracks every now and then. Solid fare imho. No one was dancing though. People were lounging, talking, getting drunk but not dancing although the the music called for it.

(I would have danced, but I was standing at least 20m away next to the largest longkang in S'pore, with nattering clusters of people around me.)

And worst of all, he left shortly after 12am.

Well, back to listening to his CDs. /sigh

Well done Straits Times! Hire an veteran journalist with years of experience writing for respected publications, for your flashy new redesigned (again) paper. Then force him to leave after 8 months.

Letter from Singapore

Published by PranayGupte.com on 2004-11-19

Not so long ago, an important member of India's federal cabinet took me aside and asked why was it that Singaporeans were racist. I was floored by the question, which the official asked in all earnestness. In his long career dealing with ethnicities and communities all over the world, he said, he had never quite encountered the sheer arrogance and hubris demonstrated by Singaporeans.

"They think that they know it all," he said, noting the absurdity of a nation of four million people taking on a country of 1.2 billion people. "Even a minor Singaporean official will talk down to someone as senior as me."

I don't know if I fully agree with the cabinet official. Singapore and India, in fact, have been working hard at building stronger political and economic relations: they are about to sign a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), which covers not only trade but also investment and services. The Indian government hopes that Singapore, which has US$1.3 billion invested in Indian technology and telecommunications companies, will bring in an additional US$2.5 billion to help build India's languishing infrastructure next year. Singapore, in fact, is the biggest Asian investor in India, and third only to Mauritius and the United States. Singapore - whose GDP of US$100 billion is less than a sixth of India's - expects to attract more Indian hi-tech professionals, and also hopes that India will use it as an offshore center for financial transactions.

Unlike my friend, the Indian cabinet official, I don't believe that this is a racist society. Indeed, I have been overwhelmed by the good will and graciousness of everyday Singaporeans. It's easy to make friends here, and people have been uniformly and extraordinarily kind to me. In fact, I have been genuinely touched by the gestures of sweetness and thoughtfulness from everyday Singaporeans.

But this is certainly a "rules-driven society" - in the words of my friend Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean of Indian descent who was his country's Permanent Representative at the United Nations and is now Dean of the new Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy here in Singapore.

Ironically, it was my article about the new School - named in honor of Singapore founding father - that may have precipitated my involuntary departure from The Straits Times on November 16.

But before I come to a fuller examination of the episode, let me say a word or two about the paper, which will be 160 years old next year. It's a beautifully designed paper, with 90 percent of a typical day's edition of 200 pages consisting of ads. I was hired in March 2004 as its global-affairs columnist. I wrote columns under my own byline three or four times a week; I also wrote at least one or two longish analytical features and profiles each week. And I wrote unsigned editorials (which are called leaders here, in the British fashion) mainly on developing countries, international finance, global politics, India, and the Middle East - subjects that I've long covered in a journalistic career spanning four decades.

The Straits Times has no competition in Singapore. It's owned wholly by a company called Singapore Press Holdings, whose stock is sold publicly but whose affairs are closely monitored by the government of prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, son of Singapore's founding father, former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew.

The paper is run by editors with virtually no background in journalism. For example, my direct editor was Ms Chua Lee Hoong, a woman in her mid 30s. She was an intelligence officer. Other key editors are drawn from Singapore's bureaucracies and state security services. They all retain connections to the state's intelligence services, which track everyone and everything.

At the newspaper, I was struck by the total absence of conversation or banter in the huge newsroom. Having spent two decades at the New York Times, including my student days in the United States, and having run my own newspaper subsequently, The Earth Times - not to mention my 18-year tenure as a columnist at Newsweek International, plus 16 years at Forbes as a contributing editor - I was accustomed to the spirited atmosphere of news rooms, not to mention disagreements and disputes.

I believe that what precipitated my termination from the paper on the morning of Tuesday, November 16, was my refusal to include in the article about the LKY School some falsehoods about Mr. Mahbubani that two editors suggested that I should insert. They both claimed that Mr. Mahbubani has had problems with the nation's security services and that he was viewed as a radical when he was a student at what was then the University of Singapore (now National University of Singapore).

There was no way that I could independently confirm such suggestions. Moreover, I believe they were false. Mr. Mahbubani may have been a student activist in his writings for the university newspaper - but since then has distinguished himself for nearly four decades as Singapore's emissary in various places. The fact that he was named head of the LKY School is testimony to the high regard in which he is universally held. (His first book, "Can Asians Think?" was a best-seller in Asia and Europe, and also did pretty well in the United States. His next book will be published in the spring by Public Affairs in New York.)

It would have been simply inappropriate to include unsubstantiated stuff about Mr. Mahbubani's alleged radicalism during his student days. And it's highly unlikely that he would have risen as high as he has, had he been really considered a national security risk. My own feeling is that among some of the intelligence and bureaucratic types who run the Straits Times, there isn't universal good will toward the LKY School or its dean.

Like newsrooms everywhere, the newsroom of the Straits Times has its share of jealousies, resentments and fiefdoms.

It is also a poorly run organization. For example, my editor, Ms Lee, killed a substantial quote that I obtained from Mr. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, chairman and publisher of the New York Times, on the grounds that he was "distracting." When I wrote an e-mail note to Arthur, whom I've known for a long time, to explain why his generously given quote to me was not used, here's what I received from Mr. Cheong Yip Seng, the editor-in-chief of the Straits Times:

we do not do this on this paper, namely apologise to a newsmaker whose quote we did not use. if i were the newsmaker, i would think poorly of the paper. if the nyt uses every quote of a noteworthy newsmaker, they will need to double the pages they use daily.

----- Forwarded by Cheong Yip Seng/SPH on 14/11/2004 06:37 PM -----

Needless to day, Mr. Cheong missed my point entirely. Arthur Sulzberger had made a special effort to communicate with me from 13,000 miles away to give me a long personal statement about the New York Times and its directions. I used the quote in a column on the media, but, of course, it was edited out. I felt that in view of my own long tenure at the Times, and my friendship with Arthur, I owed him an explanation, at the very least. It was common courtesy on my part, not brown-nosing to Arthur, who doesn't take to kindly to obsequiousness anyway.

Ms Chua, my editor, also killed two other exclusive interviews I'd obtained in recent days, mainly through my access to important people gained over four decades in international journalism. She said that what was said by Dr. Supachai Panichpakadi, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, and Mr. Peter G. Peterson, Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations - and the author of a recent best-seller - was "boring."

In fact, both were timely interviews. Dr. Supachai spoke about ending textile quotas which, starting in December, will give developing nations unprecedented access to the markets of industrialized nations. And Mr. Peterson spoke about the troubling U.S. deficits, and how both Republicans and Democrats have been irresponsible about dealing with the current-account deficit that's expected to balloon past US$600 billion this year.

Ms Chua further recommended that I should turn to a white colleague in the news room for lessons on how to ask questions. Since I didn't come to the Straits Times to be re-educated in journalism - after a pretty distinguished career of my own - I felt that her advice was inappropriate. She was, of course, well within her rights to kill any story she wanted, but people like Dr. Supachai and Mr. Peterson aren't usually accessible to inconsequential newspapers such as the Straits Times.

Be that as it may, I thought that the editor - who was trained as an intelligence officer, not as a journalist - was way out of line in recommending that, at age 56, I take lessons in journalism from a white man at the paper. Among the things that I was hired for, incidentally, was mentoring young people at the Straits Times.

Now some people I know in Singapore regard Ms Chua's behaviour as racism. I do not. But another episode in the news room last week certainly suggested racism to me. A Chinese colleague of mine - a fellow columnist named Mr. Andy Ho - had changed the thrust of my column on Diwali, which happens to be a national holiday here. While his technical editing was superb - and I told him that - what appeared in the paper subsequently simply wasn't my voice.

When I approached Mr. Ho about this, he waved me away in our newsroom like one would a persistent beggar. Perhaps he did not realise the significance of that gesture when directed at a Hindu-born person like me, however secular I may be in my sensibilities.

But he repeated his gesture in a manner that was so dismissive that I then addressed him by the only appropriate response, a barnyard epithet. I was struck, not by his gesture alone - I've seen worse during a career in journalism spanning four decades - but by the expression on his face. It left no doubt in my mind whatsoever that he would qualify for what my friend, the Indian cabinet official, would most certainly call a racist.

"Racist" is a hot-button word, never to be employed lightly. As an Indian-born, US-educated journalist, I have never been exposed to racial discrimination. Quite the contrary. America - supposedly still a land of great racial divides - has been generous to me, truly a land of monumental opportunities.

But here's another anecdote concerning a Singaporean that was certainly sobering to me when it happened.

Some time ago, a recruiter from a venerable Singaporean institution looked me up in New York, my home since I was in my early twenties. I was being offered a job, but at a salary far less than a white gentleman I knew with considerably less experience. Why was that?

"Because you are an Indian," the woman recruiter said.

"I'm an American," I replied.

"It doesn't matter what your nationality is," she said. "You are a person of Indian origin, and that's how our compensation is structured."

Needless to say, it was an offer that I had no problems refusing.

Years later, when I finally arrived in Singapore - which was some months ago - I was quite astonished to see how many non-Singaporean Indians in professional positions were serving with coolie-like servility that they would never display back at home. What was going on here?

"You have to play by the rules," one Indian-born colleague said. "You cannot shake the boat too much. In fact, you dare not shake it at all. The money is good here, so I can swallow an insult or two."

The behaviour of Ms Chua, the editor, may be simply the kind of office politics that people holding power engage in every now and then. But it's also part of a broader attitude that I detect among many Singaporeans in journalism's top echelons here - that no one else's record or accomplishment or opinion counts but theirs. Any divergence of view is immediately regarded as subversive dissent.

This is an important point because if Singaporeans are going to be perceived as filled with hubris and an unbending my-way-or-highway attitude, it is going to be increasingly difficult for this country to attract the talent it needs to sustain its economic ambitions. In fact, young Singaporean professionals are emigrating to Australia and Europe in record numbers because they feel stifled here.

For example, I would be very curious to see how many top-notch Indian professionals in technology and the sciences actually wind up in Singapore once the ambitious Singapore-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement is signed this month by Prime Ministers Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore and Manmohan Singh of India.

Why am I sceptical that there isn't exactly going to be an exodus from India to Singapore? Precisely because of what that Indian cabinet minister told me. Singapore can attract all the cheap coolie labour it might want, but the word has gotten around in the Indian professional community that this isn't the place to come for personal and cultural fulfilment.

One Indian sociologist put it very succinctly, if harshly: "Yes, Singapore will get all the white trash it wants. Yes, it will get all the brown trash it wants. Anything's better than living in villages without electricity. But it's going to have problems getting the brown sahibs it needs."

Without those brown sahibs, Singapore will lose out to its neighbours in the great globalisation game. Already, its consumer prices and cost-of-living are driving potential talent to places like Bangkok, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi aren't such bad places to live and work in either, especially if you are in the technology sector.

Singapore, in short, is facing severe competition, and it's falling behind already. Does that mean by calibrating its culture to be more welcoming to outsiders is the answer? It's one answer, certainly. Does that mean Singaporeans should tolerate dilution of high professional standards? Certainly not. But why would any self-respecting professional coming to work here want to compromise his own standards?

And so back to that question: Are Singaporeans racist? Well, of course some of them are, just as surely some Americans are, and Australians and Argentineans and, dare I say, even Indians.

But Singapore lives in a unique goldfish bowl, and its own standards of economic excellence require its citizens to be more sensitive and magnanimous when it comes to dealing with outsiders. After all, Singapore has created a pretty well-functioning secular society for itself - even though one might argue that, in the cultural scheme of things, Tamils and Malays play second sitar to the Chinese.

This is such a beautiful place with such beautiful and giving people. It's hard not to be a well-wisher. But the Straits Times as a model of dynamic, open-minded journalism? It will happen on the day that it starts to snow here on the equator.

So what am I going to do next? A book or two to complete. Plenty of museums to visit in Singapore. Certainly scores of great food joints. Nice people to spend time with, as long as I avoid the paper's editors, of course.

Would I still recommend Singapore as a place to visit? Yes, I would, most definitely. And as a place to stay? Yes, I would, most certainly. SBut don't expect to practice the journalism of fairness and forthrightness. This simply isn't the place for that. At least, not as long as nail-pullers are running the news room. I got out before they pulled out my nails. But it still hurts.

Pranay Gupte,
Senior Writer and Global-Affairs Columnist

What a strange way to promote a blockbuster sci-fi feature! The Casshern premiere took place in a school auditorium, using a VCD copy and a pan & scan transfer at that. In other words, far from ideal aural and visual conditions. The setting did evoke fond memories of casual anime screenings back at university. For all of 4 minutes.

Even so, the film is great eye candy. I was torn between walking out and catching it later in a real cinema, or just sticking it out in my uncomfortable seat. The ponderous, confusing narrative made me decide on the latter -- I don't think I can pay money to endure this version of Casshern, truncated and modified to comment on the concerns of recent months, again.

The posters are very cool though. Stunning promos.

btw, limited edition Casshern Kubricks!

• Casshern and Brai: given away at the Japanese premiere.
  
  
• Bloody version of Casshern: HMV tie-in with the "Ultimate Edition" DVD release.

Ah, the madness is over. Our entry didn't get selected at this year's Fly By Night, but we can live without the icing on the cake. Working with and getting to know Dave, Jun and Lai Yee was a blast. Put fish back into tank -- Umlaut lives on.

Ugh. Need sleep. I kind of wish I had a real fever so I can call in sick tomorrow.

Phantasy Star 2 and 4 are the reasons why I've been reacquainting myself with the distinct benefits of caffeine. Not good, not good -- was thinking of stocking up on shuteye since Fly-By-Night kicks off this evening. But sleep has been lost for poorer reasons than two classic, very good RPGs.

Got caffeine?

Anyway --

Take me to the disco at the end of the world
Take me to the disco, take me to the disco
Everybody dancin' at the end of the world

-- Fantastic Plastic Machine is coming to town! Whoohoo!

I managed to score tickets to the Casshern premiere on the 22nd, but I didn't know then that it was the opening event for this year's Asia Media Festival. Ah -- is that an animation fair I see on the schedule? And a symposium? There's a film showcase too. Don't see a schedule, but since the SFS is co-organising it's gotta be good.

I should stop salivating soon.

The whole thing is hosted by the Media Development Agency. That's a statutory board of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts. Yes, that's right -- government-backed anime events. ^_^

I wanna join the MDA! CanIcanIcanIcanIpleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

I didn't know Kazuo Ishiguro wrote screenplays too. Will The Saddest Music In The World ever reach our shores?

The HK trailer for In The Mood For Love is, well, arty. The French one plays up the romance element of the film but exhibits restraint in its selection of (speaking) scenes, with no extra advertising except for a graceful addendum denoting Tony Leung's win at Cannes next to his name. The US trailer has all the subtlety of a baseball bat to the head with the narrator rattling off quotables from (American) critics.

The HK and US trailers are set to Bryan Ferry's rendition of I'm In The Mood For Love, which is dead romantic. It wouldn't fit with the film, but it works well for the trailers. Besides, apparently that's how the film got its name.

I'm in the mood for love
Simply because you're near me
Funny, but when you're near me
I'm in the mood for love

/sigh

Scenes from Oldboy are still fresh in my mind. Here's some trivia, thanks to IMDB.

• Based on Japanese Manga "Oldboy" by Minegishi Nobuaki and Tsuchiya Garon.
  
• Four live octopuses were eaten for the scene with Dae-su in the sushi bar, a scene which provoked some controversy abroad. When the film won the Grand Prix at Cannes, the director thanked the octopus along with the cast and crew.
  
• Choi Min-sik trained for six weeks and lost twenty pounds to get in shape for the role of Dae-su, and did all of his own stuntwork.
  
• The telephone number (08-6600330) which is supposed to go to Oh Dae-su's daughter's foster parents home in Sweden, actually has been "shut down requested by the owner of the number" (that's what the voice says when you call the number). But you are referred to another number (08-54589400) which goes to "The Embassy of the republic of Korea" in Stockholm, Sweden.
  
• The famous one-take corridor scene was shot in three days.
  

Official Cannes site on Oldboy.

Another review, from Nixflix here.

I can't find the official Korean website, so the Japanese one will have to do.

The Oldboy Ultimate Edition DVD set comes in an all-copper case. Pretty! (but not worth the price tag imho.)

Let's see --

• First Kim Possible (together with Fillmore!, the only Disney animated series I can stomach), then
  
• Gundam SEED Destiny episode 4. Next
  
• the final installment of Gundam SEED (at long last) followed by
  
• Episodes 2 and 3 of the Macross Zero OVA (watched the first in the wee hours of the morning when I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep). Breathtaking dogfights and CG. Then
  
• Franz Ferdinand music videos (didn't know the band members were all art students, but you can guess that they're fans of constructivist art), and last but not least
  
• Korean revenge flick Oldboy. Devilishly stylish, wickedly clever. Miss at your own expense.

Yeah, pretty much spent my Saturday watching stuff and sneaking in snatches of JLPT revision.

Depression claims another young, successful writer. R.I.P. Iris Chang.

It's interesting to see how Today and The Straits Time reported Senior Minister of State for Health Dr. Balaji Sidasivan's speech last night. The ST article played down Balaji's comments about gays and omitted his criticism of Fridae.com, which the Today article, which you can read here, picked up.

On the other hand, Today omitted Balaji's rationale for the different suggested approaches towards gays and promiscuous heterosexual males. Not that that rationale makes much sense to begin with:

As for heterosexual men who have casual sex abroad, he felt different measures were necessary. Dr Balaji said many were poorly educated, making it difficult to get the prevention message across.

"If the CDC can screen high-risk Singaporeans at our borders when they return, we may be able to protect Singapore women from catching Aids from these men."

I'd like to know how a "high-risk" person can possibly be identified. Can you pick them out with a MINDEF thermal scanner? Don't people lie on questionnaires? Besides, I suspect his premise -- that the majority of men who have casual sex abroad are poorly-educated -- is wrong.

And why is the gay community being singled out? The ST article states outright:

Overall, heterosexuals account for 80 per cent of HIV patients.

So wouldn't it make sense for the CDC to concentrate its efforts on heterosexual males? Instead of breathing down the neck of Action for Aids?

Not all of the ST is fluff. From time to time, you get lucid commentary like:

Nov 6, 2004
THINKING ALOUD
Women have moved on but society's in time warp
By Zuraidah Ibrahim
Political Editor

EDUCATED women here have been getting the metaphorical black eye or two lately.

How's this for starters: This week, to snag some publicity for a birth control programme, a committee chided tertiary-educated women for going for abortions, citing how the number of abortions among this group had seen a three-fold rise since 1988.

Riding on this statistic, a committee member rued the sorry state of educated women, adding that some who went to his clinic for abortions told him they didn't want babies to block their career paths.

What these statements omitted to mention was the inconvenient fact that the total number of tertiary-educated women had also jumped - four-fold. In other words, the proportion of tertiary-educated women going for abortions has actually declined.

One wonders, too, if the doctor was too quick to suggest that married women were torn between child and ambition, as if these were the only factors at play.

The choice may not be so cut-and-dried. Even if work gets in the way, it is hardly fair to characterise all the women concerned as heartless climbers of the corporate ladder, the way some of these discussions are wont to do.

The woman may be driven more by fear than by ambition - the fear of companies not willing to hire pregnant women, or of juggling the bundle of joy and the burden of work with a husband who is not willing to share the load.

The main point that the committee was trying to make was a valid one: educated Singaporeans who are not ready for children should know better than to resort to abortions; they should avoid conception through birth control.

But, have you noticed how the onus is placed on the woman? The experts could have chosen to highlight the fact that a rising number of tertiary-educated men are making their wives pregnant before they are ready for it.

No, instead, the accusing looks are directed at the women. It is as if Singapore's men share no responsibility for birth control; as if they are innocents seduced into surrendering their seed by the predatory females of the species.

One doctor on the committee acknowledged that part of the problem could be that the gap between marriage registration and traditional ceremonies made it embarrassing for these women if they became pregnant.

This is revealing of the state of morality and men-women relationships here. But more of that later.

Next, witness the letters to the Forum page lamenting the Singapore woman's lack of womanliness, her 'barbed exterior' and her insistence on putting career above everything else.

The onslaught against the Singapore woman comes amid this vexing concern that more men here are marrying foreigners or keeping them as mistresses. The prevailing sentiment - if the letter-writers and these men who marry foreigners are to be believed - is that women here are too difficult and therefore deserve this fate of being passed over for foreign women.

The presumptuousness of these letters in assuming that every woman's desire is to be wedded is exceeded only by their sheer chauvinism.

What about the role men play? How do they contribute to keeping a relationship happy and healthy?

The discussions, while they may be passed off as just idle chatter, reveal much about the mindset that still govern all of our lives here.

Singapore women have made enormous leaps in education and many have become independent, strong-minded, driven people, no different from Singapore men bred on the same ideals.

But here's the rub: The men just have not kept up.

More of them seem to be caught in a time warp. A time when women stayed at home, cooked and took care of their men's needs or, in a slightly updated version, women went to work but still found themselves left with taking care of the house.

In the second version, the men want their women to be their economic equals. But in everything else, they want to be more equal than their women.

This mismatch between what Singapore women have become and what Singapore men still are is really the reason behind the recent letters berating women and why it's so convenient to place the blame on abortions by educated women - on only them.

Society has some catching up to do.

For some reason, a woman's advance is always measured in terms of trade-offs she must make - between career and family - whereas a man's is never that.

In politics too, women politicians are constantly being asked that question. Few of us journalists ever ask male politicians about the trade-offs they make.

This mindset seeps into many other decisions - including whether to have or keep the baby. The responsibility of keeping the baby as implied by the doctor rests with women.

And worse, for those women who have to get rid of their babies because they have not gone through their traditional vows, why the insistence on face? What is being transgressed here? Society's expectations that a couple must not have copulated before marriage? Or, the veil of hypocrisy that it goes on but let's not tell the whole world?

If the marriage is legal, so should the baby-making be.

But no, for the sake of maintaining some myths about female virginity and tradition, abortion is the chosen way out.

The expectations on Singapore women are huge. At the workplace, they are supposed to be equal to men even though they earn less. At home, they contribute to the family income yet bear the larger burden of rearing children.

Yes, I know, there will be men who will say they are doing their fair share, they are as liberated as their women.

I have met these specimens too and some are very dear to me, but I would hazard a guess they are not the overwhelming majority of men.

For all that they have delivered, Singapore women have a right to be demanding and, yes, difficult even.

And if women decide not to have children, don't be quick to blame them. Men, and the rest of society, should also look at themselves in the mirror.

Well said! But is anyone listening?

The newly revamped Straits Times website now requires registration to view anything beyond the present day's issue. An unfortunate result is that all my links to the ST's columnists now require registration. Phooey.

JLPT's a month away. Ugh.

Found an old scrapbook while cleaning my room. The pages reek of teenage angst - did I really write all that?

btw, does anyone know the author of this poem?

The Swimmer

Windhover, gliding
On the blue firmament
Of noonday water
I ride at ease
And see below me
Fathomed in twilight
Primeval mountains
Under seas.

Barnacle-snowcapped,
Their peaks, sliding
Beneath the wing-tip
Which is my hand,
Shadow the gorge
And the dark weed stirring
Its forest fleece in a
Tidal wind.

If God, dividing
The light from the darkness,
Moved on the face of
Earlier seas
And called forth creatures
From every crater,
Where once erupted
Anemones

(The great eel
As long as a valley,
The lunar crab
On a hill's brow
Squid with the cataract
Tentacles tumbling
Waterfall-white to the
Rocks below)

What man dare fathom
This land's mystery
With no lodestar
To bear him light
But a constellation
Of sunstruck fishes
Falling in fragments
Through the night?

The formatting's slightly off. The 4th and 8th lines of each stanza are not supposed to be up against the left margin.

Bride and Prejudice was trite and not very funny. It's amusing to play "spot the Bollywood influence" and the gorgeous Aishwarya Rai is a joy to watch, but otherwise it was pretty much a waste of time.

Fresh trivia from my alumni magazine: Joshua Marston, director of Maria Full of Grace, was from UChicago. AM '94 in Political Science, then went off to NYU for a Master's in filmmaking.

There's still hope for me then :p

Hence, as a token of our appreciation to you for making road safety a priority, we have enclosed a brochure with discount coupons and attractive offers from our participating partners in road safety.

Why are the Traffic Police sending me junk mail?

There's very little religious commentary in Maria Full of Grace, so don't be misled by the clever poster. The merits of the film should be sufficient to reel in an appreciative audience however. Maria is solidly put together, managing to avoid moralising or sentimentality for the most part and fusing gritty reality with sympathetic characters. The film slows down a bit in the second half, but the suspenseful moments are well-crafted. The very emphatic Catalina Sandino Moreno, playing the titular character, truly carries the film.

Mmmm... Routledge Classics. Thought never looked better. And affordable too!

Bush is winning. Crap.

Orwell's cruellest insight is that people have little desire to know the truth. This is an important challenge to a certain kind of optimism in the liberal tradition. The core texts of liberal toleration, such as Milton's Areopagitica and Mill's On Liberty, take for granted that individuals will wish to know the truth. They contend that in the absence of censorship, truth will eventually emerge and be recognised as such. But even in democracies this may not always be true.

Shades of 1984? Definitely.

In the world Orwell describes, it is not socialism that has failed, but rather modernity and mass democracy.

And yet the world doesn't feel smaller. If anything, the erasure of boundaries can make the world feel intimidatingly large, too large to feel at home in. These movies play on our unarticulated sense of that scary bigness, and they posit the feeling of being lost as the unavoidable consequence of a world in which we can go almost anywhere -- instantly, through virtual means, or in a few hours thanks to air travel. Some of these movies ("Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset," "Irma Vep," "Lost in Translation") feature characters in foreign ports of call; in others ("Hamlet," "Nadja," "What Time Is It There?") the characters are just as lost in the places they call home. These are not xenophobic films, not movies that preach the virtues of sticking close to safe, familiar surroundings. They are about a world where the safe and familiar are being erased...

It's nice to know I'm not alone, even if the article is slightly overwrought. The author's defense of Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is, well, "unique" I suppose.

Nah, Kaena: The Prophecy wasn't very good. The animation was decent, the camera angles kept changing like an epileptic dragonfly, and for some reason the frame rate obviously slowed at several points throughout the movie. A waste of Anjelica Huston's and the late Richard Harris's voices.

The 2046 OST really grows on you. The music didn't particularly strike me during the movie, except for Connie Francis's extremely seductive Siboney and the Xavier Cugat pieces. After listening to it two or three times though, the soundtrack becomes addictively melancholic.