A new idea, and omg snow

Winter is coming

So yep, it’s snowing. I’m not sure if that small picture can show the slurry white stuff that’s floating around all over the place, but snow is a bitch to try and capture on camera especially in mid air. Doesn’t help that everything is all grey too. At any rate, looks like it’s time to bust out the really warm clothing, start drinking more alcohol to stay warm and go buy footwear that isn’t going to get soaked and eat your toes.

In other, happier news, I have finally sat down and finished something that I’ve kept promising myself. I’m just calling it a voice log at this point, but the genesis of the idea was with good friends in school for a radio program. Of course this isn’t quite there yet, but I’m hoping it is a good start, at very least. Took me about a night to come up with the text and a couple of tries to record everything. Because I am hopeless with audio editing, I had to do everything in one take. Then there was the challenge of finding an audio hosting service that you could embed onto wordpress, and I don’t think i was very successful in that. I’ve done the next best thing, and all you need to do is click on the link below.

Voice Log 1 - <—- yes, this link

A Thankful Woman

In the London Underground, me and my dad were taking the morning train to Piccadilly Circus. It was, as I was beginning to realize, a typical train ride in the capital of England and the British Isles. This means that half of the conversation you hear is not in English, and that there are less white people than train stops on the whole line. Either the venerable Anglo-Saxon now commutes by car or indeed the face of Europe has changed so much as to displace the every more vulnerable looking White Man from his ancestral homelands.

One person stood out in particular during that train ride. She was seated in a corner opposite us, and throughout the journey, she was writing very deliberately into a small exercise book. Sometimes, I could spy her mouthing the words that she was slowly writing out on paper.

A few stops worth of observation soon revealed what was being written: a list of things that woman was thankful for. The list itself was the usual, giving thanks to various family members and friends, all with nice proper English names like George, John and Peter (names that you would never name you kids in Singapore unless you wanted them to be laughed at in school for having the same name as characters in the PETS textbook). My dad pointed out that she is probably on therapy, and that we better watch out if she starts making sudden movements (okay he did not say the last part, but the man’s just generally paranoid about London Underground trips all round).

As the trip wore on, I ended up reading a discarded newspaper (“KATIE PRICE WAS RAPED” screams the headline) and my dad fell asleep. The thankful woman left our minds momentarily, until finally the train reached Piccadilly Circus. On my way out, I glanced over and saw that with the same kind of slow determination that we first observed, the thankful woman had filled up half the book. Although, it did seem that she ran out of family members to be thankful for and so now was giving thanks for some even more important things. Like her last three entries:

I am thankful for
- Japanese food
- that climate change is being addressed
- that I’m not Gordon Brown.

Poor Gordon, and yeah thank god I don’t have his job.

At least Blair looked like he was having fun

An Inevitable, and Comforting Truth

Dedicated to the courage of my friends

While cleaning the kitchen today, I chanced across a local Norwegian newspaper. I do not understand any Norwegian, but still there is something about newspapers that make you flip through them, even without reading. The last few pages of the paper were bathed in pink, and in the headline, the word Gay sat there prominently, proudly and almost (I would like to imagine) fearlessly. The article was entirely incomprehensible to me, and so I leafed through most of it, looking for a while at the pictures of young men looking happy and holding hands.

At this point, this short tale can take two directions. On one hand, I could have immediately loudly bemoan the liberal enlightenment of Europe and the back-water, partially state assisted culture of discrimination that still pervades in Singapore. Then I would launch into a point by point tirade of the dismal situation of homosexuality in the eyes of Singapore law, taking long personal attacks against the 377a debates. Then finally, I would look to the AWARE saga as an event of encouragement and empowerment, urging everyone to not lost hope.

Of course, this all has been done to death by just about anyone with a soapbox to stand on. And tragically, the Internet has both loud idiots and soap boxes in large supply. This by no means takes away from the truth of the matter – the current state of affairs in Singapore is indeed deplorable. However, given the excitable nature of local online communities, many people have blown almost everything out of proportion, to the point where there are only extremes and no consensus for moving forward.

I suppose that for a moment, standing in the kitchen, I felt the stirrings of self-righteous indigence that would spawn all the above. Yet, looking again at how comfortably a whole gay segment sat in the newspaper right beside the sports section, there is a strange sense of hope.

For when we peel back all the rhetoric, appeals to religion and public conscience and passionate speeches, the fact of the matter is that homosexuality being decriminalised in Singapore is a fore-gone conclusion. What is being debated on in Singapore, from the sterile antechamber of Parliament to the faceless digital space of online forums, is all merely quibbling about when this day will come. The reason for this does not rely on any appeal to natural justice, or ideals of equality, although they can right be so. Instead, history provides are far more convincing picture on how this will all play out. After all, every western nation (including Norway) we now view as “enlightened” has gone through the very same debate process currently ongoing in Singapore. And, as history as shown, each debate has only weakened the incumbent, conservative position, until it has to be conceded entirely.

There are some amongst us that would attempt to paint the respect for individual liberty and equality before the law as “western values” that are too permissive for our delicate, conservative Asian values. This is hilariously racist even, suggesting that only our White Men Gods are deserving of certain individual liberties while Asians remain in social bondage. Still, even if the western experience cannot apply, recent history in Asian also shows the overwhelming trend towards decriminalisation. China decriminalised anal intercourse as early as 1997. Indian courts has ruled 377a to be unconstitutional. And so, Singapore is increasingly left on ever thinning ice, clinging to Asian values that the two most populous Asian countries no longer adhere to. No government is immune to international pressure, and even for the most obstinate PAP, the time will come when such pressure can no longer be ignored.

The tempo of change all point to an invariable conclusion that there will be a day where we can open a Singaporean news paper and have a gay segment that is not under politics or crime, and that that day is coming. The 377a debates are but a speed bump in the inevitable. For so long as there remains individuals who fight with courage and conviction for things fundamental to them, then the days of 377a are numbered, and those who insist on resisting are fighting a losing battle, like trying to stop the a tide with tissue paper (I suppose some think this as a peculiar form of martyrdom). They may claim God to be on their side, but we have history and time on ours.

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.