Am now in Tokyo, where i have been reacquainted with the meaning of humid. It rains pretty often here and when it's not the sun's nice and bright. But the humidity is more or less always here.

At least I can make myself understood here. Czech looks difficult to pronounce with all those consonants and far too many accents on the letters. The net effect is that when I say something and a Czech speaker repeats it to me, the two words sound like chalk and Roquefort. For instance, thank you is written dekuji (insert accents at your own discretion) and is pronounced something like yeh-ku-ii. Many can speak a bit of anglicky though, so smile a lot and give it a go. :)

For the sake of continuity, there is also an extremely ugly TV Tower in Prague. This one looks like concrete blocks haphazardly stacked on top of one another by a giant toddler. Franz Kafka has his grave in a cemetery under that thing. I wonder if that's somehow ironic? But Kafka's not dead -- how can you be when you're advertising the Prague Marathon?

By the way, I was informed that Shanghai's building an ugly TV tower too. Maybe it's an ex-Communist thing. Y'know, in denial of all those wasted years or something like that.

Yeeeeees... the legacy of Marx is bad architecture and 80's music. Everywhere I went in Prague there was 80's music on the radio. Sure I heard Czech pop. But more often that not Bananarama or early Madonna or A-Ha or Duran Duran would greet me in the shops. If I was lucky I'd get early 90's Annie Lennox. Is this Prague's way of compensating for all those lost years?

Not that it has to. The city is as beautiful as everyone says it is, even if they haven't been there. Baroque, Renaissance and Art Nouveau architecture everywhere and walking around the city is really the only way to savour the sights. But really -- would you expect less of the former capital of the Holy Roman Empire?

Is that where all the statues came from? I wasn't prepared for the profusion of statues in every nook and cranny of the churches. They even put 30 of them on the Charles Bridge, flanking the endless swarm of tourists, starving artists and pickpockets. One of the statues, of St. Jan of Nepomuk who was caught in a power struggle between the King and the Church and thrown off the bridge for refusing to reveal what the Queen confessed (probably to having had too many cupcakes at dinner), has two bronze plaques. Legend goes that if you rub the plaques you'll return to Prague someday, so as you might guess they're rather shiny. Which lends credence to my theory that it was a rumour begun by lazy cleaners.

Maybe they had thousands of tourists way back when too. I'm sure someone must have wanted to come see the original Golem. Rudolf II was a huge fan of alchemy, inviting alchemists and scholars from all over Europe (Kind of what the Singapore government's trying to do with it's biological sciences industry) but the Golem - aha! - was locally made by Rabbi Loew from the mud of the Vltava river to help people (You can see one outside a tourist agency in Josefov helping to hold pamphlets). There are a gazillion variations of this story. Some say the Rabbi realised that his creation would be used for evil more often than for good and destroyed it. Some say that the Golem is still alive, able to change its features at will and is really disguised as Cher.

Best of all to my dear Singaporean heart and wallet, is that Prague is inexpensive. One US dollar gets you about 25 koruna these days. Klobasa with mustard and a slice of rye? 23 Kr. 1.5 litre bottle of drinking water? 7Kr. 500ml bottle of beer? (and good Czech Pilsen beer at that). If you're paying 30Kr or more you must be a tourist.

Alas, got caught in the rain on my first day while avoiding Hare Krishnas and came down with a cold, so no absinthe for me. I shall meet the Green Faerie some day when I'm not drowning myself in orange juice.

Even for the non-alcoholics, there's plenty to see. Charles Bridge, the mechanically-cool Astronomical Clock in Old Town Square, the spawling Castle, the churches... Vienna's better if you like music, in my opinion. True, Prague has chamber concerts galore every day in this church or that hall. The problem is that they're small chamber groups who probably meet every weekend to drink Gambrinus beer and decide on a common repertoire. You don't need to be a psychic to predict that, for an average of 300Kr, on a random flyer for a musical performance handed to you there will be one or more of the following:

Bach - Air
Vivaldi - one or more of the Four Seasons
Mozart - Guess. Hint: initials are ELN
Dvorak - Slavonic dances
(Runner-up) Pachelbel - Guess which one? Rhymes with Ganon
The best of Broadway musicals (Not a joke).

Prague is also famous for Art Nouveau and Czech Cubism. Apparently you can only find Cubist Architecture here (I'm not surprised it didn't catch on. Multiple dimensions, prolific right angles and opposing perspectives make building things to live in a bit tricky). I really like Mucha's works, so it was a happy situation for me. I now own far too many Mucha postcards, but I love them all :)

My second day in Prague is coming to an end. I haven't written anything about Berlin yet, have I?

Berlin isn't really my kind of city, even though I don't regret going there. I don't go to clubs, I hate techno, I can't tell my Bach from my Beethoven and I don't like beer that much. But I love their public transport and Berlin has great museums and churches.

Dom zu Berlin cathedral is wonderful (in an area called Lustgarten), and the Pergamon Museum is a must-visit. The latter is so named for the Pergamon Altar (from - well you can guess) with it's 113m long frieze depicting the Greek Gods laying the smackdown on the Giants. Zeus takes on three of 'em (including their leader) and special mention is given to Athena. Too bad some of it was being restored. The restored Reichstag is majestic but there are always hordes of people queueing to get into the observation decks. Most of them came from the nearby Brandenburg Gate; all it welcomes these days are tour buses.

One of the first things you notice is the Fernsehturm or TV Tower. although I suspect in German it really means "Big Eyesore". The tallest structure in Berlin is visible from every d*** where. So while you can get nice views from on top, everywhere else it's annoying. Like the aunt who insists on appearing in every photo you take during family reunions. Imagine a large concrete golf ball tee. Cut it in half, stick a disco ball (appropriately sized) in the gap, paint the tee above the ball orange and let it be the antenna and there you have it. It's irritating. Like having Max Palevsky appear in every photo you take at the UofC.

This past weekend, the Christopher St. Parade happened -- largest gay pride parade in Germany and I missed it. I thought it was on Sunday when it was on Saturday. So while the parade was happening I was watching the Swatch-FIVB beach volleyball Women's finals. I stumbled onto them by accident, honest. USA vs. Brazil -- Brazil won. they had better supporters anyway. What's odd is that Berlin is nowhere near a beach. In fact the playing area (with tons of beach sand trucked in) is next to the ruins of a palace. And there was also a sand sculpture exhibition somewhere in Berlin, nowhere near any ocean.

My hostel was in the former East Germany, and it looked appropriately run-down. I did go round looking for remnants of the Cold War period. Checkpoint Charlie no longer exists, but a 300m long section of the Wall still stands covered in all it's graffiti-ed glory. Also found out that while the Wall was up, the West German trains (S-Bahn) had to pass some stations in East Germany on their routes and those had to be walled up and guarded for years. Soldiers in ghost stations watching forbidden trains speed by.

Beer is cheap and good - which it is neither in the US. And the names sound cooler too. You could lean over the counter and ask for a timid-sounding "Bud" (which is a poor version of the real, better Czech Budvar) or a mundane "Miller", but over there you can demand a FRANZISKANER! Or a WARSTEINER! Nothing like German to make alcohol sound cool (dare I say, macho?), even if sometimes you wonder if they're not just replacing c's with k's and spelling things differently to irritate the English.

Beware when crossing the roads -- there are usually two traffic lights at crossings . One in the middle of the road and one opposite you. The catch is that the middle one and the far one don't always match. One can be green and the other red. Those nefarious little red and green midgets, immortalised in souvenirs all over Berlin! Nearly got run over near the Siegessaule (Victory Column). You have been warned.

Just arrived in Berlin today, after a night in London.

Travelling, so I won't be able to log regularly (well... not like I have been doing so to begin with but...). Am in New York City right now, and wishing to the depths of my soul that I came here for university and not @#! Chicago. And while we're at it -- I wished I'd finished my NS too before starting uni.

Ah well.

Also, I am now much much more reluctant than I was before to travel together with my parents.

If you would like to know, I should be done with roaming after July 15th. Ciao.

Convocation was this morning. I am no longer a college student.

Just a bit more packing and I can leave tomorrow. I'm still having difficulty coming to grips with the idea that I am leaving the university and all the people that I have come to know during my time here, and am not coming back for years. A decade or two, maybe never.

I'm scared of these kind of changes, because I'm terrified that I have to face them alone.

How do you say goodbye?

You can, I suppose, tell someone whom you've greeted, chatted with, debated with, shared opinions with, laughed with, seen around all the time that you won't be there when they come back after the summer's over. But what is this sense of loss settling into a quiet niche within me?

I'm sad that I have to go. It's impossible to stay of course, but I feel sad all the same. Because for those whom I've had the fine fortune to know here, I don't know when we'll meet again.

Haven't updated my blog for so long because of various graduation-related tasks that I've had to get done. All the things that have to be packed up and shipped out are mostly on their way -- but it was maddening in every sense of the word. For some reason I always end up reinventing the wheel and this time it was no different. Had no idea where to begin and no idea who to ask and so seized on FedEx initially. But shipping with them costs a @#! bomb. Then I discovered that the U.S. Postal Service has a book rate for shipping overseas, and thanks to the help of my fantastic parents I managed to ship the books that I didn't give/throw away before the post office on campus closed. Thanks also to God for not letting me flip out, for having the support of my parents, and for letting me be the last guy to get in to the post office before it closed. :)

I gave away a lot of my books. As I was throwing volume after volume out of the boxes it struck me how futile having my own personal book collection was. I rarely reread my books after all -- perhaps I should utilise libraries better and think very carefully about my furture books purchases. How hard that was over here and that was just with a smattering of book fairs throughout the year and visits to Powell's on 57th. A greedy urge to buy buy buy while the self-restraint that usually reins the consumerist impulse is suppressed by some strange moral belief that reading is good for you. Maybe it's better that I wasn't in London or New York...

Well well, what d'ya know. I did find a copy of The Trial of Henry Kissinger at the book fair. True -- it's not fair to single him out for all the abominable things the U.S. did during the Nixon and Ford Administrations, but it's a start to uncovering the reasons why hatred of the U.S. runs so high in many parts of the world. Wish more Americans -- particularly in the current Administration -- would pay attention.

On a side note, it seems that the author Hitchens has become a yes-man for the Dubya Admin. I know next to nothing about the guy of course, but I hope he hasn't made such a hypocritical choice.

I think I'll start on the book after I finish Murakami Haruki's latest collection of short stories After the Quake. Picked up the new softcover edition while shopping on Fri evening, before the movie. Excellent stuff ^_^

At last -- done with classes. My last final for while ended at 12 noon Fri. Time to turn my attentions to preparing for my exit from Chicago.

Feels strange to have absolutely nothing to study for, for once.

Watched The Trials of Henry Kissinger this evening at Doc. Fascinating documentary. I'm compelled now to read Christopher Hitchen's book of a similar name, which inspired the BBC film. Perhaps I'll find it at the 19th Annual Printer's Row Book Fair this weekend.

What to make of the most famous American diplomat ever? I'm inclined to agree that he was as duplicitous and amoral as the film presented him as. The evidence is compelling, but more importantly I agree because in my opinion those qualities were what made him such an effective statesman for the times he lived in. His America was one that saw no end to the Cold War, was paranoid about the Communists taking over the world and so did everything possible to avoid appearing weak in front of other countries.

Hey, maybe things haven't changed that much since HK fell out of the public limelight. Now that's a disturbing thought.

City Trees

I have seen city trees
fight for air --
elbow each other
with their crooked arms
for a gulp of sky.

Even their spring
is hard won --
the pyrrhic victory
of scant leaf
from blackened branch.

I admire their slant on things --
the way they spire above
the small irony of fences
and tulips at their feet --
the way they stare down
the envy of windows --
the traffic of windblown faces.

They remind me
of what is not concrete,
what is in spite of what is.

-- Linda Opyr

Ugh -- I am sick and tired of thinking and writing.

No energy, no understanding, no love, no community, no confidence -- no happiness.

Ah! Nostalgia! Relieve those days of fine Squaresoft 8-bit RPGs that kept you indoors while the sun shone outside and your childhood passed you by! 8-Bit Theater

Or maybe not.

Anyone remember Secret of Mana?

Secret of Mana Theater

And why bother sitting through all 26 episodes of Anno Hideaki's animated opus, Neon Genesis Evangelion? Not when you have the Evangelion Thumbnail Theater.

I saw The Hours. Pretty good. Not a great film though. Philip Glass's piano tinkling is omnipresent and gets irritating quickly (Heard the piano playing on the official movie site? That's basically it for the whole movie). Julianne Moore's and Nicole Kidman's bits were... lacking in the complexity found in Meryl Streep's section.

Still, the film raises the intriguing possibility of people getting stuck in other people's happiness. I suppose as an intellectual or literary device it makes sense -- not everyone has the same idea of happiness. Yet on a more personal level I find it difficult to believe that in a two person relationship, you either force-fit yourself into the other person's idea of happiness or you end up bitter, broken and having to choose between suicide and "life". Relationships aren't that static, are they? Don't people adapt their behaviours to each other to some extent? Takes both people to work for happiness, right? Or is that kind of "happiness" by compromise (for lack of a less suggestive term) a less-adequate happiness than if you found the "perfect" person?

Well... even within that framework couples still break up I guess. I suppose when one party feels that he/she will be happier elsewhere, what is the other party to say? What is she/he to do? I have no answers for that. All I know is that it sucks to be the one left behind, dealing with the fact that the happiness wasn't as -- well -- happy as once believed. The intellectual solution is of course, to analyse and correct. Letting go of someone however, isn't something you can reason out on your own even if you know it was something between the inevitable and the right thing to do.

I wonder how other couples do it? Break up and join up with someone else together so easily like some folk dance. Man, am I missing something here?

Came back and watched Krzysztof Kieslowski's Red, part of his famous Three Colours trilogy. A better movie, I think. I liked the way the movie generated its own self-enclosed logic, its own sense of destiny. The film also deals heavily with human communication, particularly by telephone. A disembodied voice that separates more than it links. But the movie is never ponderous. Slow-moving perhaps, but the plot development is delightful to those who stay awake.

Betcha didn't know what Gundam actually stands for:

General
Unilateal
Neuro-link
Dispersive
Autoromic
Maneuver

No, I did not just make that up. But the folks at Sunrise probably did.

The New York Times
May 23, 2003
Senators Sharply Criticize Iraq Rebuilding Efforts
By ERIC SCHMITT

[W] ASHINGTON, May 22 � Democratic senators assailed the Bush administration's postwar reconstruction effort in Iraq today, peppering Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz with complaints about the planning and execution of the strategy. Even Republicans joined in, offering pointed criticisms of the administration's performance.

Lawmakers have been stewing for weeks over the administration's failure to consult in depth with Congress about the costs, methods and goals of rebuilding Iraq, and some of those frustrations boiled over at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The concerns from lawmakers underscored the challenges facing the administration not only in Iraq, but also in maintaining support in Congress, allied capitals and among the American public for the difficult and dangerous postwar mission.

"I am concerned that the administration's initial stabilization and reconstruction efforts have been inadequate," said Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican who heads the committee. "The planning for peace was much less developed than the planning for war." Mr. Lugar said the physical and political reconstruction of Iraq could take at least five years.

In a particularly testy exchange, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the panel's senior Democrat, berated Mr. Wolfowitz for the administration's failure to acknowledge publicly that the postwar efforts would cost billions of dollars, require years of involvement and get the United States bogged down just as it is in the Balkans.

"When is the president going to tell the American people that we're likely to be in the country of Iraq for three, four, five, six, eight, 10 years, with thousands of forces and spending billions of dollars? Because it's not been told to them yet." Mr. Biden said. "I don't know about you, but home constituency doesn't understand that. They think Johnny and Jane are going to come marching home pretty soon."

Mr. Wolfowitz said the pace of reconstruction was hard to pre- dict. "It's possible that things will go faster," he said.

When he tried to discuss Iraq's resources for rebuilding the country � notably its enormous oil fields � Mr. Biden cut him off.

"What are the resources?" Mr. Biden demanded. "For us just to get to the point where we're talking about increasing to 1 million barrels per day export, there's going to be a need for a $5 billion investment in the oil fields to get to that point."

In his opening statement, Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged that security, especially in Baghdad, was still a problem, but he said that media reports of looting, lawlessness and violence in the Iraqi capital overlooked improving conditions there and in other Iraqi cities.

He reaffirmed the administration's long-term commitment to rebuilding Iraq, and ticked off a list of initial successes, from the availability of electricity in Basra all day long for the first time in 12 years, to the reopening of primary schools throughout Iraq.

"We cannot afford to fail," Mr. Wolfowitz told the senators. "We cannot afford to allow Iraq to revert to the remnants of the Baathist regime that now ranges throughout Iraq in their desperate bid for influence and power."

But even as he sought understanding for the difficulties confronting a monumental rebuilding task that has been under way for only a month or so, Mr. Wolfowitz was greeted with skepticism from many senators.

Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said in a statement that "we may have underestimated or mischaracterized the challenges of establishing security and rebuilding Iraq."

Democrats were far more punishing in their assessments.

"It is very hard to fathom what the administration's strategy is with respect to the immediate stabilization of the situation, let alone the longer-term reconstruction of Iraq," Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a statement.

Senator Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, accused the administration of squandering a well executed military campaign with "a half-baked plan for reconstruction."

"Answers from the administration about the scope of the job, and the likely requirements in terms of U.S. manpower, resources and time, remain vague at best," he said in a statement.

Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged that the administration misjudged how quickly qualified Iraqi police officers could be trained and assigned to duty and that Pentagon officials erred by not having Jay Garner, the first civilian administrator, brief lawmakers more fully before leaving for the Persian Gulf in March. Otherwise, Mr. Wolfowitz gave a spirited defense of the Pentagon's planning for the war's aftermath.

He said he stood by his criticism of Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, who suggested in February that it could take "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" to stabilize Iraq. Mr. Wolfowitz said he interpreted that to mean 300,000 troops or more, and the Pentagon did not envision needing that many.

Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who joined Mr. Wolfowitz, said there were 145,000 American troops in Iraq with 18,000 more from the Army's First Armored Division on the way. Beyond that, General Pace said, there are no plans to increase American force levels. There are also about 20,000 British troops in Iraq.

Mr. Wolfowitz also defended a decision by L. Paul Bremer III, the new civilian administrator, to delay the selection of an interim civilian Iraqi authority until security improved and American officials took more time to vet Iraqi representatives.

"If the situation in Iraq is somewhat messy now," he said, "it's likely to seem even messier as Iraqis sort out their political process."

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	High
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Very Low

Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test

But I knew that already -- I'm at the place where fun comes to die right?

Returned from Anime Central on Sunday evening. I'd love to write a report of what happened, but I have a 10 pg Korean Civ paper due later this Tues morning. On page 5 right now, and struggling to write something that isn't plaglarism...

Bought stuff. Didn't get to do all the things I wanted due to lack of sleep and skit preparations (related -- was out helping make props until 5am Friday morning, on top of mad BA paper writing in the week preceding the convention). We were runner-up for Best Group Skit. Oh well. I suspect our winning awards two years in a row might have tipped the scales against us. In any case lots of people came up to us after the Masquerade and told us how cool our skit was. Our Kikkoman was immensely popular. Of course, no one cared about my crappy Amon.

Well, with the end of ACen my duties as President of the Anime Club have mostly been discharged. I don't quite feel so much fulfilled as... relieved... I'm glad things went ok. Can sleep in peace now -- once I finish that damn Civ paper.

One of the things that amazes me about the U.S. is how often pro-industry legislation (more often than not at the expense of the common person) is justified using xenophobia and patriotism. Take for instance, then Commissioner for Patents and Trademarks Bruce Lehman's statement at a 1997 hearing regarding H.R. 2281 a.k.a. the WIPO Copyright Treaties Implementation Act.

"To the extent that we wait in implementing the [1996 World Intellectual Property Organisation] treaties; to the extent that we fall behind other countries in implementing them, we will be abrogating that leadership role that appropriately belongs to us. And so I encourage you to move expeditiously on these matters; they are very important to our national economy [...] We have to keep in mind that in other countries people will be looking to us for a signal. Many developing countries around the world -- and we do not want to give them a loophole to be able to steal our intellectual property."

H.R. 2281 is, of course, better known by the title that the Senate gave it: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

South Korean industrialization was far more difficult and problematic, from both an economic and political standpoint, than those who celebrate it are willing to admit. More specifically, in addition to rapid growth, [Park Chung Hee's] economic strategy also produced an unbalanced and unstable economy. Moreover, because of the oppressive nature of the growth process, Park's strategy generated its own political opposition. Growth itself thus created the need for ever greater state repression.

--- Martin Hart-Landsberg, The Rush To Development: Economic Change and Political Struggle in South Korea (USA: Monthly Review Press, 1993), 164

My BA just hit 30 pgs.

:)