ReNe: one more month

One more month till we fly to Singapore.

We haven't been back since we left three years ago. And, unsurprisingly, we've been thinking more and more about Singapore. About people and places we'd like to visit, food to eat, things to do, food to eat. Yes, the food is a big part of our memories.

On the less material side of memories, we've been remembering how we felt when we left, and what changed. We had perceptions, preconceptions and a few misconceptions about what it meant to live in a different country. For myself, I'd say I've settled into living in a foreign country better than I expected.

We're very curious; will we feel like visitors to Singapore? Not tourists, but not locals as well? Or will Singapore slip back like an old, comfortable shoe?

What do I miss about Singapore? Food tops the list. Having our own place as well. Sometimes, usually in the depths of winter, I miss the blanketing humidity as well. I imagine my skin becoming dry and stretched and old when the humidity here drops to 15%. I've made some new friends but they tend to feel transient. I do miss the comfortableness of relating to people I grew up with. And, rather surprisingly, I miss the rain. I miss the pouring monsoons and thunderstorms that can go on for hours. Rainwater is never warm in Toronto. I miss the tropical evenings, the warm orangey haziness and the cool that finally settles after a buzzingly hot day. I also miss Orchard Road.

There are a lot of wonderful things about Singapore but these are the specific stuff I miss.

On the flip side, will there be anything we miss about Toronto? Perhaps that should be the subject of a post sometime in the future.

ReNe: the fuss about summer camp

When summer came round, I started to notice this thing called 'summer camp'. At first I paid no attention to it; I figured it was probably much like the school camps back in Singapore, where you send a class of kids away to some chalet in Pasir Ris for a few days. But then I started to think, maybe it's a lot bigger than that.

There were the advertisements everywhere; there were even the charity calls for donations so that less privileged kids can be sent to summer camp. I was mystified. Why were there huge posters in the bus-stops about summer camp? And why was it a huge deal that money be donated so that a kid can go to summer camp? I mean, I seriously doubt the kids would die if they don't go to summer camp...

I saw a young teenage boy busking a few times; his sign read, "Send me to summer camp."

And then, there was the news story a few weeks back about a girl in Quebec who was grounded by her father because she was caught on an online dating site (she was underaged, 14 I believe). Fair enough right? Part of the grounding includes not being able to go for a 3-day school trip. She was so pissed (particularly about the school trip) she took her father to court... and won. I'm just flabbergasted. Apparently the lynch-pin in the argument was that of the school trip; that it was some really important event in a young teenage girl's life.

There were also the numerous NY times articles. For example, camps that cost $10,000 for tuition (sounds like a university education), policing checks on conselors' web pages, summer theatre camps, and so on.

Am I missing something out here? Is summer camp like some terribly crucial teenage rite of passage, like the prom night? (Again, prom night here is a cultural phenomenon. I guess we can't really grasp its significance merely from movies and other media. Singaporean JC kids try to emulate the hype but sometimes it falls really flat. It's like trying to celebrate Christmas when you're not even Christian.)

So I asked some colleagues. They were like, nah, it's no big deal. It's just something for working parents to send their kids to get them out of their hair over summer holidays. They seemed a little embarrassed and changed the topic quickly.

Ok... so I guess (and these are all my personal conjectures) it's more the media hype than anything else. I guess summer camp is a big deal but not that big a deal. And I'm also guessing that, like many teenage experiences, it was probably a huge thing back then, but when you're twenty-plus and looking back, you wonder why and what you worked yourself all up for.

ReNe: long weekend!

I'm pretty excited -- this weekend promises to be fun. Firstly, it's a long weekend because Tuesday is Canada Day (and many people in the office do not plan to be around on Monday). Also, it's the culmination of the Jazz Festival and Pride Week.

Since last Friday, we've been going down to Nathan Phillips Square after work for the free jazz concerts (apparently the only free concerts are held at NP Sq), and it was pretty nice. We'd buy some buns from a Chinatown bakery and listen to the jazz and talk. The music's very decent and the entire atmosphere is very relaxed and festive, and the fact that it's all free is a huge plus.



We haven't gone to any of the Pride Week events yet but we do plan to go watch the Pride Parade this Sunday. If we have time, maybe the Dkye March as well on Saturday. Me, I'm hugely, hugely impressed with the support such an event has, including official support from the city. I can't see such a parade happening in Singapore, much less ten days of activities -- just look at the ban on the 'non-pink picnic' at the Singapore Botanical Gardens last year. It was apparently an official ban by the park and all I can say is, WTF?! It's just a picnic, not an orgy. But people turned up anyway (for the non-pink picnic) and I say good for them.

When I asked during lunch at work, tongue-in-cheek, if there would be an military parade or fly-past on Canada Day, my colleagues were incredulous. Eyeballs rolled, as if it was such an archaic and militant notion. "Oh, pul-leaze." I find their reaction very interesting.

ReNe: stand-ups

Recently, we've been watching stand-up comedies (off the net, of course, because we are cheapskates), something I've never really watched before. Mike's a fan of such shows and he was quite eager to force them down my throat.

The first comedian was Russell Peters, an Indian-Canadian who hails from Toronto; Indian as in Asian Indian and not the North American Native Indians, and a central theme through his jokes is that of race. Pretty funny and he does accents very well, but after the fourth or fifth show, some of his jokes were getting old.

Then we started watching Eddie Izzard, a British comedian who dryly refers to himself as a male lesbian. He's a bit too stocky to look good in drag, but after a while, his quirky style really grows on me. I was hooked. His jokes were more rambly, very Monty Pythonish in its randomness and brilliance, full of non sequiturs, and covers a gamut of topics from history and Europe to household appliances and miner cats and the Star Wars canteen. The British monarchy wasn't spared either.

(I really like his term, male lesbian, because I can fully empathize. I always wanted to be a guy, but then my sexual preferences also run towards those of the male persuasion; I guess this makes me a female gay!)

After that, I watched a couple more, like Lewis Black and George Carlin, both Americans, but I never managed to really get into their jokes. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I noticed an interesting trend in the very small sample size I watched. The Canadian comedian talked a lot about racial and immigrant issues, something near and dear to Canada, and the American comedians ranted on and on about the Bush and religion, hot topics for Americans, I'm sure. I can see why -- you would want to talk about issues that would resonate and connect with your audience, which would likely lead to jokes that are country or geographically dependent. And if so, what does that say about British humor and the topics that are near and dear to them?

ReNe: 2001 and sunshine

Coincidentally, the last 2 shows we watched were 2001: A Space Odyssey and Sunshine.

2001 was a 1968 sci-fi film, directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke. It's widely considered a classic, and with Clarke's recent passing, I was reminded that I've never seen this film. It's very different from the usual Hollywood fare, I'd say. Very dramatic, but in an understated way. It's scientifically accurate and rather slow-paced. Interestingly, the film probably also tried to portray a 60's image of space-travel in 2001, and the first thing that struck me was the 'retro' style, all rounded and matte plastic.

Sunshine, in comparison, was released last year. Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, the plot revolves around a crew on a mission to re-ignite the sun. It was supposed to be a sci-fi film, but halfway through, one could be forgiven for thinking it was a slasher/mystery.

I couldn't help but contrast the two. Both are sci-fi films but they have almost a 40-year difference. One was the obvious styles differences: Sunshine was a lot faster-paced and adrenaline-pumping than 2001. Sunshine's spaceship was a lot grittier and darker, all steel and shiny to 2001's white plastic. The onboard computer was bland, nothing at all like 2001's psychopathic HAL. I like the 'oxygen garden' idea on Sunshine, and the overall idea of sustainability on a long space mission. I like the attention to technical details in 2001, while such details were passed over in favor of dramatic action in Sunshine. Another obvious difference was the crew -- 2001's American/Russian vs Sunshine's American/Chinese.

The third difference I noticed was 2001's optimism (about space travel) to Sunshine's pessimism. Well, it's not quite pessimism, but Sunshine was a lot gloomier, though it's main message is that of hope. 2001's vision of space travel was romantic and utopian, while Sunshine's vision was more prosaic, almost even dystopian. I think it says something interesting about the current attitudes towards space travel as compared to the (some say naive and unsustainable) euphoria of the 60s.

I'm still trying to decide whether or not I actually like the two films. I suppose I do. Certainly they were interesting, though for different reasons. Sunshine was interesting because of the actual plot; 2001 was interesting as a historical window.

ReNe: owning versus renting

Was just reading an interesting thread about home ownership, precisely, about how it may not always be a good thing. The discussions revolves around the US market in particular, a sore topic now with the subprime crisis, and admittedly something I didn't anything about until I came here, not that I'm claiming I know a lot about it now.

It was always considered so, and is actively promoted in the US with mortgage interest deductibility. However it has also perhaps had some detrimental environmental effects, including sprawl, long commutes and far more cars on the road than a system where people rent and have a bit more flexibility in the size of unit for their needs or the distance to their jobs.

Lloyd Alter

James Surowiecki wrote an illuminating article on the problems with home ownership. A few bullet points:

• Buying a home used to require a sizable down payment: in 1976, the average for a first-time buyer was eighteen per cent. By contrast, a National Association of Realtors study of first-time buyers between mid-2005 and mid-2006 found that almost half put down nothing at all, and that the median down payment was just two per cent. If you earn eighty thousand a year, no one will lend you four hundred thousand dollars to buy stocks, but plenty of people were willing to lend you that money to buy a house.
• As long as home prices were rising, all this leverage seemed like a good thing: it let people buy homes that they couldn’t otherwise afford, and maximized their return on investment. But, with home prices sinking—in the final quarter of 2007, they were down almost nine per cent from the year before—the downside has become clear: as many as fifteen million homeowners now owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Homeownership isn’t building wealth for these people; it’s locking them into indentured servitude.
• Homeownership also impedes the economy’s readjustment by tying people down. From a social point of view, it’s beneficial that homeownership encourages commitment to a given town or city. But, from an economic point of view, it’s good for people to be able to leave places where there’s less work and move to places where there’s more. Homeowners are much less likely to move than renters, especially during a downturn, when they aren’t willing (or can’t afford) to sell at market prices. As a result, they often stay in towns even after the jobs leave. That may be why a study of several major developed economies between 1960 and 1996, by the British economist Andrew Oswald, found a strong relationship between increases in homeownership and increases in the unemployment rate; a ten-per-cent increase in homeownership correlated with a two-per-cent increase in unemployment.

In Singapore, it was *always* considered a good thing to be able to own a home; even dinky little HDB flats appreciate appreciably in value; three-room flats bought in the 70s increased their value 10-fold in thirty years. And even if you do not sell at a good profit years later, even if you just break even, you still 'make money' because you've 'saved' on rental over the years. An article I read a long time ago (like over a decade ago) said that in Singapore, the type of investment that generally has the highest rate of return is property; though this article was written before the property cool-down in the recent years, the appreciation rate on property is still very decent. Moreover, one can 'live in their investments' and kill two birds with one stone. So even though home prices are pretty astronomical (for the size of the flat), 93% of Singaporeans own their home.

In countries bigger than Singapore, where a lot of people actually do move from one state or city to another (quite a foreign concept to Singaporeans, literally), people usually rent instead. Still, the US is proud of the fact that over 60% own homes. I, too, thought it was generally a good idea to own rather than rent, so it was pretty interesting to read the articles that argue against home ownership (note, the writers say home ownership is only not economically viable in some scenarios; it's not a sweeping statement). When we left Singapore, I was initially glum about the thought that we would probably be renting for many years to come -- all that 'wasted' money. However, there are advantages to renting, as I'm beginning to realize. Hardly anyone in Singapore rent, those who do are usually foreigners, so I've never really thought much about the issue before.

ReNe: why we fight

Oddly, we seem to be watching a lot of these kind of critical documentaries lately. Perhaps it's because watching one provides issues to ruminate upon, names to watch out for, and like browsing the net, making the jump from one film ('web-page link') to another gets easier. I told a colleague about watching The Corporation and he recommended Why We Fight.

Why We Fight, a film by Eugene Jarecki and released in 2005, looks at the anatomy of the American war machine. It starts off looking at 9/11 and the war that followed, but really, the Iraq war was just the latest in a long series of conflicts the US has been involved in all over the world since after WWII. It discusses the military-industrial complex or MIC, as first coined by former US president Eisenhower, and the planned rise of the 'American Empire'.

What was disturbing was the stupendous amount of outright lies spouted by the people in power (the US president and his team, the generals, the think-tanks) to the public. For example, they were saying things like, "the first strike in Iraq at Dora was successful and it was targeted so as to minimize collateral damage because we were using smart missiles", when actually no military people were killed in that attack (much less Saddam Hussein, the supposed target) and instead 15 civilians at Dora Farms (a farming community) were killed. Even the two pilots who flew that mission didn't really know what was going on; they were 'following instructions' and though they were not told what was they were attacking, they probably were ordered to take out some important military building.

During the first six months of the Iraq war, 50 precision air-strikes were conducted against Iraqi leadership. Of these strikes, none hit its intended target.

And of course, most famously, no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were ever found in Iraq (one of the supposed reasons for attacking Iraq in the first place). However, as one of the interviewees said it very well,

"We know that they have nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, because we have the receipts."

I recalled when the US attacked Iraq in 2003; I thought, all right, even if Iraq has WMDs, does that give the US the right to attack them? The reasons given, the so-called 'intelligence reports' linking the 9/11 attack to Al Queda didn't seem convincing, and the leap of logic to conclude that 'Iraq has WMDs and therefore we should attack Iraq', seemed rather unreasonably aggressive. But then, I am not a US citizen and I was not in the US at that time. An American friend was describing the scenes the day after 9/11: she was driving back from another city, trying quickly to get home, and there would be people on the bridges waving US flags and people displaying patriotic placards and just an amazing emotional fervor that was hard not to get caught up in.

And, like being given a rope to hang himself, there was actually a news clip of Bush actually saying,

"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September the
eleventh... but what the vice-president said was...."

Another particularly famous quote from Bush, who said it with absolutely no sense of irony, in light of what the film reveals,

"If the war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force of the US military and we will prevail."

(It should be, "And we will force our war upon others...")

But, as mentioned earlier, the film is not about the Iraq war, it's about the American war machine. If it's not Iraq, it's Vietnam. Or Cuba. Or Haiti. Or Yugoslavia. Or Iran. There is a long list of countries the US has invaded. This page also has a nice summary.

I was complaining to Mike that the trouble with this kind of critical documentary is that one ends up feeling angry, frustrated and helpless in the face of all these stupidity. Environmental issues on the other hand, I feel I can actually make a small but direct difference.

Still, it's a very good show. Go watch.

ReNe: end of suburbia

Just watched yet another environmental issue-related documentary that was very well done and powerful. The full title is The End of Suburbia: Oil depletion and the collapse of the American dream, and was produced/directed by two Toronto filmakers Gregory Greene and Barry Silverthorn.

The focus of the film was on two issues, I'd say: suburbia and oil. Suburbia is driven by cheap oil, and so suburbia cannot be discussed without mentioning oil, but a large portion of the film also examines the peaking of oil (production) and its implications.

Back in Singapore, I've heard a little bit about suburbia, but I had imagined mostly in the context of the term 'suburbs', the 'residential' area where people live, as compared to 'commercial' and 'industrial' areas where people work. Like what the private estates in Yishun or Sembawang are to Shenton Way or Tuas. It was only after coming to North America that I found out more about what 'suburbia' in the North American context actually means, both from informative media and through a short experience (in St Louis). It's more than just a zoning label to describe a separate municipality; it's a concept.

It's also a misguided ideal, as this film (and many other people, books, etc.) expounds in detail. I'm not in a position to say very much about suburbia, having never really lived it, but I found myself nodding (figuratively) at parts during the film where suburban sprawl was discussed. The strip malls, the one-storied mega-malls with huge carparks, the ubiquity of car ownership (it's like a civil right). On the drive from St Louis to Toronto, I noticed huge empty tracts of land -- no surprise there; the US is huge -- and then the occasional building or house, almost literally, in the middle of nowhere. I was mystified; whoever lived or worked there would have to commute (i.e. drive) many tens of miles... I also noticed a lot of huge trucks on the inter-state highways. They probably formed half, or more, of the vehicular population on the road on a regular weekday.

Guess it's one thing to learn about such things intellectually, but like visiting a foreign culture, it's quite another to actually see it. I would say that living in St Louis was very comfortable; things were cheap and plentiful, and I can see the seduction of the so-called American dream.

Released in May 2004, the film was made very soon after the US invaded Iraq. Some of the experts interviewed in the film cited their doubts as to the veracity of the justifications for war, and its projected length (remember the WMDs that were never found, and Rumsfeld's claims that US soldiers would be welcomed with flower strewn streets?) "If there wasn't oil in Iraq, the US wouldn't have invaded it." A couple of the experts further predicted that the ongoing Iraq war, which they consider part of a more generalized war (or euphemistically, 'contest') for oil and gas resources, could easily last a lifetime, as a template for upcoming conflicts between nation-states to secure energy supplies.

Here's a ratio: the US gets 15% of their natural gas from Canada, but that 15% accounts for 50% of Canada's production. Clearly, it will only be a matter of time, given the diminishing stocks, that Canada will reduce exports to the US. When that time comes, what is going to happen to US electricity rates?

There were some interesting predictions mentioned in the film. One was about the peaking of oil production by Marion King Hubbert; he predicted that the US would peak in the late 1960s to early 1970s, and this came true in 1970. Experts also realized that though the price of oil after WWII was extremely cheap, oil prices would continue to rise, and rise rapidly, after the peaking of oil production. A tickertape on the TV footage in the film showed the price of crude oil to be $38 per barrel (accompanied by terms like 'record' and '!'). That was in late 2003. Curious, I googled around. Post-WWII, the price per barrel rarely exceeded $18.53 and until 2000, only exceeded $24 per barrel in times of crisis or conflict in the Middle East. Interestingly, only 50% of the time period from 1947 to 2006 have oil prices exceeded $18.53 per barrel. This time last year, the price of oil was between $50-60 per barrel. On 12 Mar 2008, that number hit $110.70 per barrel (all prices here in USD).

That's a very rapid rise in the past few years.

Global oil production has, very most probably, peaked already. The fact that it would peak is not even a matter of dispute anymore; it's only a matter of when. As Richard Heinberg says it in the title of one of his books, the party's over. And this would have far-reaching consequences, most fairly bleak, some not-so, but overall, it means that we simply cannot go on leading a non-sustainable lifestyle. Environmentalism is not for a small group of 'hippies' anymore.

At the moment, alternative energy sources cannot provide the same level of energy production and at the same kind of prices as oil, and the hype over hydrogen and ethanol is simply overdone. It takes more energy to produce hydrogen (energy that requires electricity produced from oil) than it provides, and the earth does not have enough land to grow the corn needed for ethanol required to maintain Americans' current lifestyle. That was what the interviewees were saying back in 2003, and this has shown to be even truer today. But the crux of the problem is that of excess -- Americans simply cannot afford to live the lifestyle they've been leading for the past half-century. Coming up with new fuels just so that one can continue driving cars (which require resources to make) on long six-lane roads (which also take resources to maintain) between their suburbs and city is not solving the problem at its fundamental level.

Good show. Go watch (promo).

ReNe: jesus camp

Ew. I just watched Jesus Camp (more like Mike started to play it even though I didn't feel like watching it...). Two words: bad memories.

I spent 10 years in a Catholic school, about 8 years in 2 churches, and I daresay I know all about the Bible and even more than I want to. Back then, I tried hard to 'believe' because everyone around me was 'believing'. Talk about peer pressure. I even tried hard to ask the existential questions (like, why am I here?) because 'everyone' was asking them, even though deep down, I couldn't be arsed.

Why am I here? Why not?

Can I accept I'm an insignificant speck in the universe? Yeah.

Does it make me feel small and unwanted? No, not really.

Who cares? Why are you forcing all these questions onto me?

Mike is against religion in an intellectual way and he can approach it dispassionately, but me, I've been so scarred that I alternate between denial and avoidance of religion, or ranting, because I've been *there*.

Watching the parts where they were chanting in tongues reminded me of a session at St Andrews Cathedral. As an Anglican church, the stereotype is that they're staid, so I supposed where they were trying to drum up more 'passion', and they held a session to 'encourage' us to speak in tongues. Now, try as I might, I couldn't. Maybe I didn't let myself go enough, probably I didn't 'feel' God enough. I'd admit I had serious doubts even back then when I was trying hard to believe about tongues; to me, it sounded like gibberish. I'm not a scholar in languages but even I knew a so-called language composed of a handful of syllables that goes on and on as if stuck on a repeat track, did not make sense. And how can every single Christian who speak in tongues all sound different, and also not understand each other?

Now, as the kids (well, teenagers to be exact; I was fourteen or so) started to speak in tongues, one by one they were allowed to leave the room. The adults continued to pray over the remaining kids, 'encouraging' them to speak in tongues as well. Then to my horror, I realized I was the last kid in the room. All of the adults (maybe 4 of them?) converged onto me, alternately praying for me in tongues and 'counseling' me in such a way as to insinuate that my belief was weak. Now, I've been in the session for 3 hours, I was starving and dehydrated and I was starting to feel more horrified by the language of tongues than inspired. I felt like I was in an exorcism, like I was in some satanic cult ritual more than anything else. Utterly desperate to get out, I *faked* it and was finally released.

Thinking back, I've never really believed, but I tried my hardest to convince myself to. How could I not, with all the guilt messages? Questioning inconsistencies (like the treatment of women in the bible) gets you shot down. I was even told to quit Judo, or at least to stop meditating, because it was satanic. As a teen, I didn't really have the confidence to rebut or to walk away even when it all sounded *wrong*.

It was child abuse. And from the show, it still is.

(Aside: there was one part in the show where the pastor was denouncing Harry Potter, and I was wondering, so what does she, or the church, think about metahumans or superheroes in general then? There were kids in the show wearing T-shirts with comic book superheroes on them... What about Superman, the alien from Krypton, the all-american hero raised in the bible belt?)

MiKE: The corporation

you gotta watch this.. it' available on youtube too!

ReNe: so this is british humor

I've heard of Monty Python for a long time, but hadn't actually known what their films were like. In fact, I actually thought it was one film, called 'Monty Python'....

Anyway. Recently, I've watched 'Erik the Viking' and 'The Meaning of Life'. I saw a bit of 'The Life of Brian' but didn't really like it so I didn't finish it. 'Erik the Viking' was all right, a little simple (I'm certain I've watched it before, when I was very young).

'The Meaning of Life' ... that was hilarious. It took a while to get into the plot, if there was one in the first place, but I'd say I really started enjoying it right after the Middle of the Film. It seemed random and all over the place, yet managed to come together. It reminds me very much of 'Little Britain', and especially 'Hitchhiker's Guide'.

Hm. What did I like about it? The story was simple, yet twisted. There were blatant (*extremely* blatant) sexual inneundoes, and some even more direct than that, everywhere. Bare boobs and outrageous scenes of gore. The sex-ed lesson. Mustn't forget the drag queens. And throughout it all, the extremely polite language.

MiKE: The Story of Stuff.

I got the link to this site from my course instructor. Good video. More people should see it. And act on it.
To watch the whole video online, go click on this link. Here are some teaser clips:

MiKE: TED videos.

I've been watching these videos for the past day and today. Very interesting. Gives one hope for the future, and alternative ways of considering the world that we live in; different from the world that mass media would like to scare us to be. TED is the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference, which, brings together some of the best minds in the world for an idea exchange.

Here are some of the ones that I liked, including this, with special relevance to education, which I think should be required viewing for all educators:

PBS documentary on ID

for those who don't know, ID is intelligent design, which is what the creationists came up with when they were frustrated in their attempts to indoctrinate children in schools in the US.

PBS Nova made a documentary about this, and I find it excellent.

The link is: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html