The cold cold working world

Exit small shallow coves of youth,
The wild waves of untamed sea await.
Adiue homely hills of the low land
My heart longs for you here in the north.

If internship were a window into the working word, what a bleak view it is to witness. Gone are the doting (if doddering) professors hopeless attached to their academic soap boxes. A long good bye, to your fellow students compatriots in skiving. Farewell to those long pregnant and lazy afternoons gazing across the botanical gardens.

O the passing of youth, so terrible a tragedy to befall us all.

It’s been so long

I sit here staring blankly at the empty screen, fingures poised to start typing. There are few things more daunting than the white, blank page. It’s potential limitless and yet bound to your own mortal competence. And then I realize, that it has been so long since I actually wrote something because i wanted or felt like it. Often I write, because i think it necessary. Writing becomes a means to a purpose, and not the end in itself. I want to write simply because I want to write. Not to change the world or to finish an assignment, but simple to see words crawl across the white page. A spidery script forever changing the blank expanse.

The Joke that is Citizen Journalism

Or rather, citizen reporting, since as of late everything since to involves citizens reporting on each other. Just yesterday I was taking the train home, when a young Malay man opposite me decided to squat down and sit on the floor. To my quite abject horror, my first reaction was to whip out my camera and send the picture of this unfortunate person to the Straits Times for people to “tut tut” over under the accusing headline of “WHERE ARE OUR COURTEOUS COMMUTERS.”

I am horrified, because I have become victim to an especially damning sort of social conditioning. Stand there in the moving train, I could have done several things. First, the option was always there to ignore him. Second, I could tell him to stand up. And third, of course, I could send his picture to STOMP, providing our news-starved newspapers with a tidbit to publish. The choices beget the question: if I could not bother to tell him to stop, was he really bothering me in the first place?

With all the spin peeled back, citizen journalism as heralded by the likes of STOMP is nothing more that a perpetuation of a school yard mentality to “tell the teacher.” Think of all the major stories “broke” by citizen blogs. A large amount of them involve people telling on other people. The current H1N1 pendamic is no different. Internet users hide behind their sactuaries of anominity and freely criticise potential carriers as being irresponsible. The lable of irresponsibility carries as much irony as does the term citizen journalism.

The Smoking Democracy

Today, the United States of America House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to give the government unprecedented control over the smoking industry. Officials can now limited the amount of nicotine in cigarettes, prohibit sale, and of course, mandate compulsory warning signs on each packet.

To any Singaporean, this kind of stuff is old hat. Possibly in the near future, the establishment will gratingly remind us of this, trumpeting our island as yet again being a world leader that even the decadent liberals of the Western world eventually follow. Considering briefly that in Singapore, smokers are subjected to being taxed out of their nose, bombarded with ceaseless campaigns of blacked brains and lungs and most iconic, being confined to a small yellow box with others of their ilk. We easily bring all this to mind, and yet seldom give pause to brood a while perhaps, on the question of “Why?”

The short answer is that in a democratic society, the majority has spoken (as has the house of representatives in the USA), and so sets down the law. If you are satisfied with this answer, then democracy for you is as simple and as crude as mob rule. Over the course of its development, countless politicians have warned against the degeneration of democracy into the tyranny of the majority. So the answer that “because it’s the popular opinion” is woefully insufficient.

Of course, the majority element cannot be downplayed, but the development of the modern democracy has led to a multitude of institutions that specifically guard against simple pure majority rule. A great deal has been said about Human Rights and Constitutionality of the acts of the government generally, but in Singapore there seems to be too little being said on the subject of smoking. For while the people affected are smokers, the principle goes beyond the mere pack a day.

Without a doubt, smoking is a dangerous hobby to indulge it. It creates numerous, documented health problems to both the person and the people around him. But then again, smoking isn’t unique in this regard. A large portion of the way we live involves danger and risk. Drinking, gambling, just driving on the roads, or even eating a particular kind of food, can all be little nails into the coffin of our lives. So, if we are indeed going to herd smokers like animals into yellow boxes, depict them as decaying zombies on TV and so on, we better be asking the right questions along the way. Are these actions giving due regard to the rights of smokers? How much government intervention do we want into dictating what is the “good life”? Is this good life even possible, or do we just chose which way we are going to die?

For the crucial issue is: what happens to smoking can happing to anything and everything else. Setting the precedent for the easy incrusion by the government into our private lives simple paves the way for future meddelling as the governement sees fit. Even if the government retains popular support, democracy by then would have truly gone up in smoke.

Old Dead People

Why is it that people have the vague notion that grandparents once deceased transcend from the slightly senile, child spanking and bitterly racist people that they are into benevolent spirits that watch over the house? My grandmother was possibly one of the most unashamed white supremacists this side of the planet, the fact that she herself was Chinese was a mere minor detail that never bothered her fascination with the superior Aryan race. Looking back, it was probably this fascination that led her to marry my grandfather, a really quite dashing Eurasian sailor who after several years and 4 children promptly divorced her (in true Eurasian, skirt chasing fashion) for someone presumably younger and better looking. I’ve met this other clan of the family only on two occasions, these being the funerals of my grandfather and grandmother.

Shortly after both these events, my family being the rumor mongering suspicion loving move that it is, began to attribute just about every thing in the house to “Nanny looking over us.” This is particularly chilling, since knowing Nanny she’d probably be gleefully tipping over glasses, spilling soup and banging pots rather than doing any actual “looking over.”

History

An ancient umbilical cord is tethered to my hair,

It is the skeletal arm of history.

A grotesque thing, at once decayed and decaying,

All its color slowly drained away into greyness.

There is no escape from this weight of centuries

Burdens of sand upon our shoulders

Just like Ouroboros futile meal of his own tail,

His dance with time consuming him whole.

And so we continue our ungainly duet as the seconds pass.

As he takes me, so do I peer over his shoulders,

We gasp staring into the infite gaze of the comos,

Only by stepping on those who have come before us.

Once great men of their time,

Now grey figures of coarse sand,

Binding us, as we bind them,

Escaping too, from the inescapable.

Birthday Letters

A poem I recently wrote to a good friend for her birthday.

Every year the mail box harbors a few,
Their spidery script rambling aimlessly
Over crumpled sheets of yellow hue.
Happy Birthday, the card says soundlessly.

How curious, this relic of bygone days,
That solace can be found in hurried writing,
Even as a child’s sure path fades away,
And in deep waters we now are floundering.

And yet while words may offer little courage
As we gaze down this precipice of uncertainty
Hope is kindled in that someone else on life’s stage
Is too, strapped into this ride towards senior citizenry.

Perhaps from now on we may all only grow old together.
But as Browning did famously wrote in ages of yore,
Growing old together may just be an endeavor
One which is well worth growing old for.

Letter to the MOE: Sexual Education In Schools

Dear Sir,

I am a student who has been following the recent issues involving sexual education in schools, and have read the latest news of a suspension of all third party programs with no small concern. I would like to preface this letter with acknowledge that a temporary suspension at very least to reassess the vetting procedure is necessary, and that I no quarrel with the wisdom of the Ministry in taking that step. I pen this instead, with the future in mind and how the Ministry shall be moving forward.

It would be presumptuous for a mere student to make calls on educational policy, but as the final product of the entire education system, I believe that students too have valuable insights in this matter. Throughout my schooling years, I have been privileged to be taught by excellent teachers to whom I simply cannot thank enough, no matter how many Teacher’s Days may pass. Quite simply, I owe my teachers for having painted colour in my eyes. As many frustrated students can attest, in later parts of one’s education very often a teacher will merely say “there is no right answer” – a notion that is almost anathema to students so used to10 year series and assessment books. Looking back, I realise that rather than simply being difficult, my teachers were are that point making me realise that we do not live in a drab, black and white world of MCQ questions and answers. We live in a world of open ended essay questions, or vibrancy and colour and at times, of murky greyness.

Such colour is really the quintessence of a Liberal education. In these recent times, many people have misappropriated the term “Liberal” as one necessarily being subversive or championing certain views that are incompatible with our Asian values. Surely they have mistaken, for a Liberal education is not premised on rights or wrongs, but rather on an openness of approaches. Just as we cannot say that green is a better colour than red, neither can we say that fiscal economic policies are necessarily better than monetary economic policies. In school, we are taught that each has their short comings and may be appropriate in different areas, but we are never told (short of something being scientifically and factually wrong) that an approach is wrong. Our education system equips students nuanced and adaptable thinking skills, rather than a blunt blanket approach that is ill-equipped for the real world.

Sir, I mentioned above that our educational system has embraced life in all its vibrant colours as well as its greyness. We are now walking in such a area of greyness, where the answer is far from clear, and the pressure to get out of such an unclear position immense. I do not for once envy the Ministry’s position these weeks, in that it must be almost besieged by a flood of letters and complaints by concerned parents. No one can blame the distances a parent would go to for their child, but I write to urge sensibility on the part of the Ministry when considering the future of the sex education program in Singapore. The Ministry cannot bend to an outcry no matter how loud from parents who may, with the best intentions, assuming that they are representing the predominant view of Singaporeans.

More than numbers, the Ministry should not step down from controversial issues simply because of complaint as this sets the unwanted precedent that Ministry policies can be swayed by popular outcry. It may be sexual education today, but one can only speculate where such a trend will take us in the future. Any JC student will relate to GP issues such as abortion, euthanasia, terrorism or evolution. Will such topics also see their removal or censor on future protests from groups emboldened by their “victory” with sexual education? The slippery slopes slides both ways, and surely all the accusations levelled at those with a “gay-agenda” as eventually pushing for gay marriage, can similarly be levelled at religious groups. One need only looks to the American experience to see lobby groups pushing for Creationism,to be taught in schools.

**this paragraph is no in the original letter owing to time constraints at the time of writing. I have added in ex post for a sense of greater completeness. The following paragraph has also received mild edits for the sake of cohesion***

There is no call from any group present now for a censure of views from a religious organisation, or for that matter any association who many think that abstinence is the appropriate method of sexual education. There has never been one, and religious groups have long enjoyed certain influences in our schools. The entire issue today isn’t whether which view is correct and hence should be preferred, but rather than one view is simply wrong and should be censured. This is a significant and weighty difference, and goes against the entire notion of a Liberal education. Just as we do not seek to censore religious programs in schools, surely the same treatment can be expected for non-religious organisations as well. Prefering one on the basis that it is inherently good and the other bad again takes away educational Liberty.

I thus urge the Ministry to take the case of sexual education on its merits, and not under the pressure of anyone. I have no doubt that the Ministry is already doing so, and write mainly to reinforce that there are people in the public who are concerned as to the future of a Liberal education in Singapore. On the facts of the issue, there are many fallacious claims being made right now, and all of them should be set aside when making educational policy. Even accepting for a moment the controversial claim that homosexuality can be influenced, there is the difficult proposition that 3-4 minutes out of a one time 3 hour workshop can truly shake the entire moral fiber of a child whose parents have certainly imparted certain moral values upon. There are no doubt grounds for abuse, and if an instructor were to exploit her position to actively “homosexualise” a student, then these instructors should be taken to task. I stress however that such instructers have to be seen as incidences of human failure rather than systemic error of the entire program. Just as how a reasonable person can differentaite between a jihadist and a moderate religious person, we must also accept that to paint the homosexual community as child predators is a mistake.

Sir, I plea to the Ministry adhere to the same policy of an open and Liberal education as it has had in the past. The task at hand is not about the censoring of views, but the facilitation of views. It is not about which view to chose, but how to ensure both views are presented to students. I write this such that future generations of students can similar see the world in all its colour and diversity. There are few greater crime than to raise a generation who only sees in monochrome.

Yours sincerely,
Leon Ryan

In my mind there is a road.

It is covered by a threadbare blanket of dried leaves.

The leaves stir gently in the swollen air,

Tiny eddies of wind nudging them along the path.

Overhead, the sky burns amber.

There is a streak of dark grey slashing through it midway,

And as I watch, the grey wound grows bigger, bleeding into the sky.

Soon it rains, a soft carpet of water covers the road and the leaves on it.

Rain bounces gently off the leaves and the road.

There are halos of bouncing water around every object,

Around the road surface, upon the leaves blanketing it.

And above all, the rain blanketing the leaves.

Blankets upon blankets.

Ippt

So after bitching and moaning about it for the whole week, Ippt is finally over. And as if it was in any doubt, I failed. So as Robo said, it was inevitable, and as to Cheryl and Sam clearly you weren’t praying hard enough for me, or that the Guy Upstairs has a funny sense of humor. However the past 2 hours weren’t as simple as failing. In fact, a large part of the time I found myself uneasily fending off some creepy guy that kept hanging around me. And the people! My fellow dramatis personae of this horrible facet of national defence. There were the Paul Tans (for those that don’t get the reference, bring to mind your average middle aged man who is not very fit but thinks that oakley apperal can make up for it) in their sunglasses and MP3 players strapped to their arms. There were some ancient looking guys who happily ambled away 25 minutes on the 2.4km track while chatting about life. Ah Bengs and your average John Citizen (or should it be Citizen Tan). 

So as to the test itself, it started off amazingly. Shuttle run at sub 9s? With the added drama of my specs flying off at the second “touch down”, the PTI rushing in to try and pick it up, and me jumping over his hand right at the end to avoid a collison. Honestly if this were a movie the whole thing would be in slow-mo with some indie rock band wailing away with a guitar solo in the background. Then cue the jarring stop to the music as I noticed this guy giving me a look. At first I thought he was merely basking in my reflected (and very temporary, as you’ll find out) glory. But then I noticed the shaved legs, the trimmed eye browns, nails too shiny to possibly natural, and of course the skin tight PT kit the guy was wearing. Sirens immediately began blaring in my head, and the state of emergency only got worse when the guy queued up right behind me for the Sit-Up Station. I looked back, he caught my glance, our eyes met in one of those supremely awkward moments that i’ll probably remeber when i’m old, and suddenly I wasn’t so worried about failing anymore, but was going to try to get this over and done with as soon as possible.

But thankfully as providence would have it, I only managed to weeze and pant my way to 31 sit ups, 220 cm jump at SBJ and a stellar 3 chin ups. All of which effectively destoryed any sort of manly aura i was putting off. And happily I didn’t see the guy anymore until 2.4 when I over took him and noticed that under the well toned chest he had a heaving gut. (note we both failed anyway). 

So with all that over, i just hope the SAF isn’t going to try and still take $100 from me =(.