"... Yet thanks to a complacent media, the President has managed to hide behind a carefully constructed "compassionate" image. As the 2004 election nears, it's crucial that voters understand what President Bush's policies really mean for our country. And to do that, we need creative new ads that clearly show what's at stake.

That�s why we decided to launch Bush in 30 Seconds, an ad contest that�s intended to bring new talent and new messages into the world of mainstream political advertising. We're looking for the ad that best explains what this President and his policies are really about -- in only 30 seconds."

Watched The Last Samurai on Fri night. Standard Hollywood fare; albeit very pretty Hollywood fare. Gorgeous panoramas of lush mountain slopes and cloud-filled skies. Rousing mass battles. 2-D villains and an emperor that�s only � more. Cool, heroic heroes in a rose-tinted conception of pre-industrial Japan � the one that too many Americans think Japanese culture should have been like.

I liked the camerawork and the high level of detail on the armour and costumes. The ninja attack on the village was excellently done imho. Of course, the heroes could not die halfway through the movie, but the ninja were silent, swift, deadly and coordinated.

Irreversible, on Sat evening, was completely different from the Oscar-grist above. Certainly more thought provoking and disturbing. The reverse narrative brings to mind the well-crafted Memento, but Irreversible has no mystery, no suspense. Instead it throws violence in your face for the first half, with the infamous rape in real-time scene becoming the frame of reference for the rest of the movie. The second half milks irony a little too much (for instance, Alex dreams the night before the rape that she�s walking in a red tunnel and it breaks in half. Her rape occurred in a red underpass), but provides valuable background and a glimpse into the sexual undercurrents just under the ties between Alex, her ex-lover Pierre and her present squeeze Marcus. These ties are placed under much scrutiny after we have seen what happens shortly after, especially with regards to the connections between violence, sex, and the objectification of women.

It�s not that Irreversible has a moral message. On the contrary, there is no room for morals � not in that urban hell that ticks along a linear progression. As the ex-con at the beginning of the movie (which is really the linear, eventual end) claims, "Time destroys everything."

The 3rd season of American Idol has made it to our shores. I have never seen an episode before last night's premiere, and I have to admit that I was immensely tickled by what I did see.

Imho, the judges (Paula Abdul looks even better now than when she was singing "Hush Hush"!) all carried themselves professionally, and I fail to see what the big fuss about Simon Cowell is all about. He was harsh, true, but not unjustifiably so. At no time did he utter a personal insult, in that clipped British accent, against any hopeful. Those who received his barbs deserved them. Perhaps he gets worse later on, but I suspect that his infamy is mostly media hype. Silly Americans.

What truly amused me was the seriousness with which many of the contestants entered the auditions. This resulted in lots of bad-tempered antics when they were told that they hadn't made it. Aside from poor self-knowledge and ego issues (one lamented that she had lost 80 pounds just for that audition), many also tried to do funny things with their voices and bodies when all the judges wanted were straight-up, no-nonsense, good singing. Indeed, one of the successful contestants was a 16-year old who did a good Dean Martin impression and when he didn't, had a Michael Buble-ish voice. There you go -- no fancy runs, no scat singing, no wiggling or contrived dance routines. Just good-ol' fashioned singing with good pitch and the ability to hold a tune.

Now if only the rest of the music industry were as discerning.

Peter Hall writes about Directing Harold Pinter's Plays.

...These three signs in the text all indicate moments of turbulence and crisis--the Three Dots, the Pause and the Silence. By their use, the unsaid becomes sometimes more terrifying and more eloquent than the said. Pinter actually writes silence, and he appropriates it as a part of his dialogue. The actor who has not decided what is going on in this gap will find that his emotional life is disrupted. The pause is as eloquent as speech and must be truthfully filled with intention if the audience is to understand. Otherwise the actor produces a non sequitur, which is absurd and makes the character ridiculous...

Am reading Joseph Heller's Closing Time:

Another prick in the White House? It would not be the first time. Another oil tanker had broken up. There was radiation. Garbage. Pesticides, toxic waste, and free enterprise. There were enemies of abortion who wished to inflict the death penalty on everyone who was not pro-life. There was mediocrity in government, and self-interest too. There was trouble in Israel. These were not mere delusions. He was not making them up. Soon they would be cloning human embryos for sale, fun, and replacement parts. Men earned millions producing nothing more substantial than changes in ownership. The cold war was over and there was still no peace on earth. Nothing made sense and neither did everything else. People did things without knowing why and then tried to find out.

I love Catch-22. Heller managed to capture the real absurdity of how people become enslaved to invisible systems, distant bureaucracies and obscure instructions. Organisations that were set up to serve people suddenly become winding traps for the unwary or more accurately, the unthinking.

Closing Time is just as wicked, if not better. It's amazing how much of it is still relevant, considering that it's almost 10 years old.

On Sunday I attended a writing workshop conducted by local poet Felix Cheong, as part of this year�s inaugural Wordfeast. Our first ever international poetry festival, if the promo materials are to be believed.

The workshop wasn�t very substantial, but at only 2 hours I wasn�t expecting anything beyond some photocopied handouts and sketches of what it truly takes to be a writer. To be honest, what really lured me all the way to Bedok Community Library where I paid $5, was the bit in the description of the event that talked about �the practicalities of being a writer.� At heart I suppose I am still a pragmatist.

Most of Cheong�s examples were from poetry, since he is a poet, but his attempts to distill some guidelines and principles were general enough to be useful to anyone who is seriously considering writing as more than a hobby � if not as a career. With regards to technique, it was Literary Devices 101. More substantial, for me and I suspect for most of those who attended as well, was his advice on discipline and purpose. Those are what separate those who write from the writers. The guidelines are simple things, short lines of text on a page. Everyone knows that the simplest things are the hardest to accomplish.

----------------------------------------------------

I�ve been thinking about why I write. Most recently I wrote a favorable review for School of Rock and Paycheck. I realised, after some pointed questions from Amanda, that I was writing to impress and to be published. When it comes to things like that, I admit that I like to show off sarcasm and attempt wit for their own sake.

Of course, there�s nothing wrong with that. In fact wit and sarcasm are quite well recognised and rewarded. There is nothing to be ashamed when you can poke fun at someone and get him/her to laugh along with everyone else too.

The problem with such writing though, in my humble opinion anyway, is that it tends to to become too clever by half. The result is that the writing loses emotion and depth. Pare away the witty repartee and suddenly you have a skeleton. Hello Yorick! Such a silly, stupid grin.

It�s not that I don�t appreciate beauty � I just can�t find the words to hold all I want to say. Even that last sentence sounded hollow. It�s like fitting square pegs in round holes, but while blindfolded so you don�t even know where the pegs and holes are to begin with.

Singapore Short Cuts is a series of screenings of digital short films taking place at the Singapore History Museum. I really wanted to get tickets to this month's screening on Saturday, but the free tickets were snapped up faster than the raw oysters at a buffet in Singapore. If I want tickets to the other events -- one every month till June at least -- I'll have to engage in some mad rush a week before each screening. I blame the tiny size of the SHM theatre (193 only?!?). It's just not big enough for all the people here who are clearly interested in local short films!!!

So You Want To Learn Japanese

Friday evening found me in the audience at luna_id's staging of a Harold Pinter doublebill. Namely, The Lover and The Dumb Waiter. I was expecting a more engaging performance. But even without the annoying Caucasians behind us who kept whispering the obvious (What are they doing? -- They're roleplaying -- Ohhhhh, roleplaying (titter) ) the whole thing was a bit of a letdown. Technically it was excellent. I liked the innovative set design, heavy on wooden grilles for some nifty lighting effects. Heavyweights Tan Kheng Hua, Lim Yu Beng (they're a real-life married couple btw) and Gerald Chew provided competent acting, as expected.

Unfortunately, the performances were kind of flat with The Dumb Waiter lacking more. Any effect on the audience came not from the delivery but from Pinter's writing. If you had known what a Pinteresque silence was and were looking for those that evening, you would have only found the ubiquitous poor cousins -- your run-of-the-mill pauses and silences that mostly indicate time passing. The British accents felt forced as well.

I believe Justin has more to say about this and with far more eloquence. For him, the performance was indicative of the state of Singapore society and theatre. After listening to him, and talking to Amanda on Sunday, I've come to a much better understanding of the relationship between a society and its drama, with the various consequences that particular relationship implies. Sounds vague, I suppose, but if I had it all worked out already I would be a far better person than I am right now.
----------------------------------------------

Spent my Sunday afternoon rummaging through CDs at Zouk's Flea n Easy. This is a monthly flea market held inside the well-known club, and thus attracts a certain sort of seller and buyer. Lots of clubwear and street fashion stuff (mostly for women I might add), CDs, movie videotapes, magazines. I was pleased to find Fantastic Plastic Machine stuff, and I'm still a little sore at missing out on a promo t-shirt for a Blur album. Michelle and her friend joined me, but the place was swelled to almost full capacity (TIP: Go early!!!) and we were looking for completely different things so not much chance to interact.

Best of all, watched the excellent Good Bye Lenin! in the evening. More on that later.

Finished Quicksilver. Whew!

Book 3 is where everything moves along after the build up in Books 1 and 2. So if you're plodding through the latter books don't give up! :)

Have to wait for a while for The Confusion, but April's really not that far away.

Finished Book 2 of Quicksilver last night. This section moved along at a much faster pace than Book 1, and was peppered with far more of Stephenson's idiosyncratic wit.

I still can't believe I actually paid to watch Paycheck in a cinema on Sunday. In mitigation, it was a purely last-minute decision. Probably influenced by my disappointment at not being able to get seats for Goodbye Lenin! for the second weekend in a row. Ugh. Unless you're a Ben Affleck fan, don't watch it. And even then you can wait till it's available for rental.

I've been on leave since the 1st, and catching the feeder service this morning made me appreciate the fact that the bus comes around every 2 or 3 minutes. During the holidays such frequency seemed excessive, but since schools have reopened even this seems insufficient to deal with the teeming uniformed masses.

Self-packed sardines
White or yellow cans on wheels
School's started again

I finished reading Dance Dance Dance early this morning. It's the most intense and depressing of Murakami's stuff I've read so far. I'd like to go back to Quicksilver, but the gulf between Murakami and Stephenson is simply too wide... actually I can't imagine reading any other book for now.

Spent New Year's Eve at Jazz@South Bridge, where Okazaki Yoshiro was performing.

Jazz@South Bridge is quite cosy and tastefully decorated. It's more conducive to chillin' rather than performances. That's what it is -- a cosy hang-out place with class. So there we were in our spot against the wall with the plush comfy cushions -- Justin, Kong Jie, Debra, Yin Loon and I. Chatting and snacking and sipping our champagne (included in the cover just for that night) and listening to some excellent live jazz.

Justin and I traded snide remarks about the couple who'd planted themselves right smack in front of us, blocking our view. From the way they behaved, jazz was pretty far from their minds.

I received my order of L5R cards, finally. They took more than 3 weeks to get here from New Zealand :p But the stamp used has Gandalf on it, and makes it all worth the wait.

I wish I had the whole set of Return of the King stamps.

Anita Mui, HK pop superstar, has passed away of cervical cancer at the age of 40.

I was never a fan of hers, mainly because I never listened to Chinese pop beyond what I had to for my Mandarin classes. By all accounts she was a likable person and a fervent community service volunteer despite her hectic schedule -- she apparently worked up till the day she fell into a coma. In fact she was supposed to launch her new book here in Singapore in mid-December, with all proceeds going to the Children's Cancer Foundation. She never turned up, and with hindsight she was probably already being ravaged on the inside by the cancer.

Now this article provides plenty of thought for Public Policy majors. Andy Ho always does a good job of making science accessible to the layman, but without cheapening or dumbing down his content. Since The Straits Times only keeps articles for 3 days, the column in question has been reproduced for your reading pleasure :)

Inoculating the world against the wrong flu
By Andy Ho
SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

IF YOU are not one of the 300,000 Singaporeans who have taken the flu shot, count yourself lucky.

The current vaccine against influenza A was made to be used against a strain first isolated in Panama in 1999. However, there is a new strain plaguing the world, called Fujian, which bears 23 significant mutations, some of which are very dramatic, Harvard bioengineer Henry Niman told The Sunday Times.

This means that the vaccine now in use will offer less than the usual 70 to 90 per cent protection rate, and probably way below 50 per cent, since 75 per cent of the cases are now Fujian.

First identified in China (Beijing), the United States (Massachusetts) and Japan (Osaka) late last year, Fujian was already causing severe illness in Australia and New Zealand by February this year.

Coincidentally, that is also the time of the year when the major pharmaceutical firms decide, in collaboration with governments, what flu strains to manufacture the annual vaccine against.

Most knew about the emerging Fujian strain, but decided to stick with Panama anyway.

How was that decision made in the US, the nation so far worst hit by the Fujian flu?

Badly.

Its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made the fateful call on March 18. A transcript of its proceedings can be read on the FDA website.

Except for a lone voice of dissent - and two abstentions - 17 physicians and public health specialists voted to bring back the Panama shot.

A close reading of the questions posed shows that, though experts in their own fields, few seemed familiar with genetics or vaccine production. Instead, they appeared dependent on the presentations by two speakers who briefed them before a vote was taken.

People about to cast an important vote are duty-bound to do some homework beforehand but the proverbial dog could have eaten all their homework, save for one person.

Came decision day, three sins committed went unexpiated because only one member could recognise them.

First, the threat that the new strain would likely pose was underplayed.

Fujian was already spreading geographically and had caused disease in the southern winter, thus heralding a new epidemic.

Moreover, the fact that two of the 23 mutations in Fujian had first appeared in the 1968 pandemic, then disappeared, only to reappear now, was nowhere noted in their deliberations.

If they had only studied the genomes of the flu strains available on the Internet, they would have seen the telltale mutations.

Second, they were told that there was no way to produce the Fujian vaccine, the strain having failed repeatedly to grow in chicken eggs. The Europeans and Japanese were experiencing similar difficulties.

(The difficulty in growing the virus should have been a broad hint that Fujian was significantly different from Panama.)

In fact, there were other ways to grow the virus - through cell cultures alone, or through cell cultures followed by transfer of the rapidly growing virus into eggs.

The Japanese did successfully grow the Fujian virus in a cell culture and transfer it into eggs. These could have been used to begin making the vaccine.

But the Americans refused the same procedure, fearing that cell cultures might introduce other extraneous agents, some potentially cancerous, into the vaccine.

In fact, chicken eggs might also introduce similar agents but, never mind, eggs have always been used.

The FDA was unlikely to approve the use of viruses that had been through a cell culture even once, the participants at the vaccine advisory committee were told.

And even if it did, approval would take months - too late to use them this season because manufacturing the vaccine using eggs takes eight months and so must commence by early April if they are to get to market by the cold season at year's end.

Yet, had they done their homework, they would have come across a firm called Solvay Pharmaceuticals with one cell culture licensed for use in vaccine production.

Using cell cultures alone without subsequent transfer into eggs produces vaccines much faster, possibly in time even for use this season.

This had been successfully tried out on an industrial scale in Austria last year, where the vaccine worked safely and effectively in 2,500 volunteers.

In addition, having voted to use the old Panama strain, it behooved the American health authorities to inform the public that this year's flu shot wasn't going to offer much protection against the expected bug.

They didn't - and yet they are still telling at-risk groups to take the shot.

I'm befuddled: Annual shots are recommended because the flu virus keeps changing, the experts say. Yet the strain used in making the influenza A vaccine has remained completely unchanged since 2000, even though the virus has mutated.

The 17 members of the committee seemed to have voted less on the science and more on regulatory considerations and industrial concerns - decidedly not their areas of expertise too.

Had the vote been 20 against Panama, it might have forced the FDA's hand to make a quick decision about using the licensed cell culture to produce the Fujian.

But it's too late now for the families whose children have died from Fujian. Looks like a long winter ahead for the Americans.

-------------------------------------------------------

I bring this article to your attention, because these are the kind of situations that Public Policy (at least the way I was taught it at the University of Chicago anyway) equips people to study. At first glance, it's easy to conclude that the decision-makers were negligent or even amoral (this seems to be Mr Ho's slant as well).

This is in no way a criticism of Mr Ho's writing, but I observe that lots of people (not including Mr Ho) think that government policy is a matter of the right people waving a magic wand. It's a whole lot more complicated than that. I wish more people would appreciate the sheer difficulty in coordinating different groups all with their own agendas. I wish more would consider the political give-and-take decision-makers play to get the best deals for their interests. I wish more people were able (or willing) to grasp the concept that routine and organisational processes can and often do blind a person to change -- even if she is the most upright person in the world.

This is why the world needs good Public Policy majors.

Rocket Mania is damn addictive.

Am taking a short break from Quicksilver, having finished the 1st book. I thought I'd read Dance Dance Dance, but I was thumbing the first pages of that book when I remembered that it was kind of a sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase. Didn't feel right not to reread that, so into my bag it went and me into bed.

Then this morning on the bus I recalled that A Wild Sheep Chase used characters from Hear the Wind Sing. Somehow it had never struck me that all three could be read in succession. Wouldn't hurt to try, and Murakami's work is worth rereading anyway.

j�nigatsu nij�yokka
anata wa
nani wo shiteru
watashi wa
machi no dokoka de
zutto anata wo matteruuuuuu

T�ky� wa itsudatte
itsudatte nigiyaka da kedo
j�nigatsu nij�yokka
hitori-kiri wa sukoshi samishii
.
.
.