Good.

All choices become wrong in the end because, as time passes, all the things you lose become the best.

- Some person named Yi Shu, as quoted in The Strait Times.

Gender stuff

This is from an article from The Sunday Times.

Etiquette and image consultant Teo Ser Lee, 42, feels that women who expect men to pay during dates and escort them home safely are nor being archaic, but simply being real.

"These are basic social graces," she says, adding that she expects her boyfriends to open car doors for her "even though it is faster to open them myself".

...The founder of dating agency Lunch Actually Violet Lim, 28, tells Lifestyle she has come across man female members who declined to go on a second date with a guy despite finding him witty and intelligent because he did not pay for her share.

"No matter how financially independent a woman is, ultimately, most would want to know that the guy is willing to provide for them should there be a need. Hence, seemingly small things like opening doors and paying during dates are tell-tale signs of their future to many women," she says.

Apart from the notion that such thinking reinforces a system of gender discrimination, as I have mentioned here previously, there is a serious flaw in the last paragraph quoted. For if those 'small things' that males do for females are indicative of commitment, care and concern for the relationship, then I question why it cannot be the females who do those very things, instead of the males. Why can it not be the female who opens the car door for the male, the female who offers to pay for the meal?

To the extent you find this counter-intuitive, gender discrimination will remain. There are no two ways about this. You cannot, on the one hand, expect it to be 'social grace' for males to pay for the meal, and on the other, deny that there are gender-related implications for doing so. To the extent you do not find this counter-intuitive, ie you find it logical and reasonable, there is still a problem because you rarely, if ever, see a female open a door for the male, be it a car door or any other doors. I believe it is a very rare occurence, too, that females offer to pay for the meal in a date. In this case can we accuse them of lacking social graces or unwilling to provide for the relationship?

Hurry up

A reporter has an interview with god.

REPORTER: Benevolent Being, thank you for this opportunity to speak with You.

GOD: You are welcome, my son.

REPORTER: I would like to ask just two simple questions, and it shouldn’t take up much of your time.

GOD: Time is transient in the greater matters, my son, but let me not disrupt you from your questions.

REPORTER: I would like to ask you, Dear Benevolent Sir – oh wait, are you a Sir..or are you a madame? In all honesty you look more like a thing…

GOD: Ha-ha, in all honesty, I am, well…Hmm. I am just myself. You can address me as, let’s see now, as Sir.

REPORTER: Yes Sir. Now my question is, how do you know that the reality around you is real? How do you know, for example, that you were the one who created earth and all life?

GOD: Well I just Know.

REPORTER: You just know? How do you just know?

GOD: For one thing, I had the experience of creating earth and all life myself. For technical reasons I shall not elaborate on how.

REPORTER: How do you know that you weren’t led to believe you created earth and all life yourself?

GOD: Because I am all-knowing.

REPORTER: And how do you know that you are all-knowing? Is it not possible, for example, that some aliens, or some higher order of life created in you the sense of all-knowingness?

GOD: That cannot be.

REPORTER: Why not?

GOD: Because I know that I know.

REPORTER: I don’t get you. How do you know that you know? How do you get this meta-knowledge?

GOD: Um..Er...It’s hard to explain this in languages.

REPORTER: Is it possible that you exlain this in any other godly way then? Say by a mental transference of information? Surely you are capable of that? And by the way, were you stammering?

GOD: Yes I was. It’s not possible to transfer the answer to you mentally, because your human brain is incapable of such a task.

REPORTER: Ok. Fair enough. However I do believe that the content of the answer is unimportant. For, whatever the answer is, how do you know that you were not deluded into believing it is the answer? I repeat myself, how do you Know that you created earth and all life when there is the possibility that aliens created them before you, then created you and led you to believe that you created life?

GOD: Assuming your hypothesis is true, why would they want to do that?

REPORTER: Beats me. If you can’t answer it I can’t.

GOD: True.

REPORTER: Actually, I can answer it. They would want to do that for the same reason you created life – if you did, that is. So, what was your reason for creating life?

GOD: I wanted to create something beautiful.

REPORTER: Perhaps that was why They created you too?

GOD: The They you mention, are actually just your conjecture. We have no reason to believe why They should exist.

REPORTER: Just as humans have no reason to believe they You exist, even though they found a watch along the beach.

GOD: Ah, but you are here and you are witnessing me now aren’t you?

REPORTER: Ah, yes. And for that reason I have every reason to believe that They exist.

GOD: How is this so?

REPORTER: You could be just another watch along the beach?

GOD: Ah..Mm yes. I suppose I can’t use the argument that I am all-knowing to counter this, because I cannot know, for sure, that I am all-knowing.

REPORTER: That’s right. You are smarter than I thought. Whoops, I didn’t mean that.

GOD: Tha-that’s ok.

REPORTER: By the way, you don’t seem very comfortable with these questions. In fact you seem to be sweating.

GOD: With the knowledge I have I created this illusion to make you think the way you just did.

REPORTER: Oh..I see. If that were the case did you foresee this interview?

GOD: Of course.

REPORTER: Why did you not prevent it from occurring then?

GOD: I had no reason to.

REPORTER: Do you have a reason to have it occurring then?

GOD: Yes, for I am manifestly kind and disposed to helping…

REPORTER: Did you say you were inclined to granting me this interview?

GOD: Well..

REPORTER: Doesn’t this mean you are disposed to act in certain ways, and wouldn’t that mean you were created by something else that programmed you to act in those certain ways?

GOD: No it was out of my own free will to grant you this interview, my own free will…

REPORTER: Ah, free will. Let’s talk about that now.

GOD: Argh no I’m getting a headache already..

At this moment GOD is seen to pulsate violently, and soon after he implodes, destroying everything in the known universe before sucking everything back in to a single point, a single point of mass that is undefinable save for some onlookers who happened to be in the way of passing. Witnessing it every now and then, such phenomenon are not rare in their world, and they shrug and walk on unconcerned. A beautiful spectacle, but there will be another one soon enough..

Angry

Now, I kept laughing to myself during No Country For Old Men, which, contrary to popular belief, as explained by comedian Jay Leno I think, was not the slogan for elderly US presidential candidate John McCain when his campaign was faltering.

I kept laughing because although Javier kills people very cruelly and mercilessly, I remember Morgan Freeman, who's not in the movie, saying that Javier, an accomplished Spanish actor, was very serious but also seriously funny.

It's true.

Putting aside his compulsion to shoot, strangle and nail people in the head with a high-pressure air gun attatched to an oxygen tank - the sort used to kill the cows we eat - Javier, shuffling about in the 1980s trousers, is in contention for either comedian of the year or disco relic of the decade.

He never smiles, he pops up everywhere like an insane housing agent, he fixes his own injuries like the Predator who fought the Alien, and, this is the absolute kicker, he has hair which makes him look like a choirboy styled by Sanjaya Malakar with a laksa bowl.

Let me tell you, it's such a hilariously bad cut it looks like No Salon For Old Mane.

In my lifetime of watching movies, I live for characters like this one - a psycho who's so puzzlingly nuts and relentlessly grim you don't know which end of what creature he came out of.

I am not in the least bit amused by this, found in an article in Life! today. TAY YEK KEAK you you got one nasty hate mail coming your way. And oh, they even put a photo of your face along with the article. Congrats, you look worse than the sort of articles you produce.

No country for old men - do not read if you havent watched

There are, I believe, few characters in fiction that come close to being the psychological disurbance the killer in No Country for Old Men is. By the middle of the film I was feeling a sense of dread everytime I saw him, and it's a feeling that no Saw nor any horror film can replicate in its profundity or strength.

I would say it's a beautiful film, if not for the fact that Moss died. Whatever the literary reasons for him dying, I see no way how his death propelled a very tense match-up between two extremely capable adversaries to a greater storyline height. Another contention would be the way the film ended. I'm not sure if that was how the book ended too, but cormac mccarthy's endings are characteristically cryptical and, I feel, always fail to compound the raw bleakness his stories commonly portray.

Listening to the piano tune of the diving-bell and the butterfly. A very alluring tune, one can listen it repeatedly the whole day. It connects me to Anton for some reason. Oh, the arbitrariness of things.

Ambivalence

Western picturehouse films, while having their own qualities, can never possess the wholesome sentimental feel certain Chinese films have. Earlier on having a need to lounge on the sofa I caught the second half of A World Without Thieves on tv. Wasn't impressed initially, it looked and felt like some second-rate show, but because of andy lau I was intrigued and went on watching. Very touched in the end.

It's about a thief-couple, the skillful vagabond kind. Being a thief he wants to steal some money from a young, naive guy on a train. Being pregnant with their child she wants to stop all this thieving business and do some good for once, so she decides to protect the guy and his savings he was carrying about with him (see the wikipedia link for more information). He managed to steal the money from another thief who stole it first, but she persuaded him to return it to the victim in the end after revealing that she has his child. They decided to protect the victim from the other thieves.

To cut a long story short, police were on board too and a detective went to apprehend the couple. They didn't resist, knowing there's no point in resisting. They have a talk. Having much respect for them as he knew they were protecting the guy, the detective decides to leave them alone in the carriage to spend their last moments together, because after being arrested they would never see each other again. They had one last request: do not tell the young man that he had been surrounded by so many thieves.

In their time together the female breaks into tears and they decide that a prison was no way to give birth to a child. They decide to escape. When they almost made it out of the train however, they discover the leader of the other thieves stealing from the young guy again, himself having escaped the clutches of the police. She says they have to help the young guy, he tells her no they need to escape. He tells her that the child is more important and he would stay back to settle the issue with the leader. She relents and escapes. He has a 1v1 with the leader, and unfortunately for all his skills he got outmatched in the end. He died.

The show ended with a fast-forward five months later, where the female was sitting in a restaurant eating and waiting for him. He didn't appear, the detective did, and she knew that he did not make it. The show's last scene showed a flashback of what happened on the train. In his dying moments the male thief managed to return the money back to the victim, who was asleep at the time. He was discovered dead by the detective, who found a handphone lying near him with an unsent text message saying that he had settled the issue with the guy and that he hoped he would see her soon.

Very very very touching. The concept of bad people wanting a new, normal life but having their past catch up with them, dragging them back, dragging them down, is a concept that will never recede in its poignancy.

Chinese shows like this very often, I believe, split its audience into two distinct camps. Some may find them cheesy, overly melodramatic. Others may find transcandent beauty in them, their imagery, the language, the concepts. I like The Banquet, but dislike Warlords and The Curse of the Stupid Flower. When I first watched Hero I found it unimpressive, I found it very dramatic. The second time I watched it I thought it was good. It's like reading that newspaper report of a young boy in China leaving his sister to drown in a river. When interviewed by reporters and asked why he did that he replied that living is such a painful thing, and that she is better off dead.

Virus

Do you really believe pasting the chinese character of fu upside-down outside your door during chinese new year will bring you luck? Or that mandarin oranges will bring prosperity and happiness to the recipient?

Of course not. There is a reason why the next generation are, as sometimes is portrayed, a de-culturised, insensitive lot of people who don't appreciate societal traditions.

One can argue that it isn't the gestures that matter, but the things they symbolise. Mandarin oranges may not in all reality bring prosperity to the recipient, but it is still an expression of your well-wishes towards your relatives. To this reply I would like to point out that you don't need a specific earmarked occasion to wish your relatives well, you can do it anytime. Occasions such as the chinese new year and valentine's day only serve as reminders for you to do so, they are life's biggest templates saved in society's collective database.

In any case, the practical value of such occasions cannot be ignored. Who would complain about a 3-day public holiday? Not us de-culturised lot for sure.

After we have travelled so far, we set the fire to the third bar

I intially wanted to write a short play entitled My real imaginery friend. The premise was simple: a man would be talking to himself, and it would be quite evident that he is in a failing relationship. Later on a lady would reveal herself and talk to him. Towards the end it would be evident that she is real and he is not, when all along the audience would be led to believe the reverse was true.

After sitting down a few times and trying to come up with an outline and a draft, I realised I couldn't do it. For one, I cannot find a way to lead the audience into thinking that the man is real and the woman is not. For another, I cannot find a way to sustain the man's conversation with an imaginery character at the start of the play. Dialogues and monologues are little of a problem with me, actually - I am one of those who believe that dialogue and dialogue alone can drive a play forward, with or without a preconceived plot; but the content of his dialogue would revolve around his relationship of which I can think of nothing interesting to say for five full minutes.

So instead of doing that play I revised a 30-45 minute play I did previously (it didn't win anything), gave it some cosmetic changes and submitted it. I think it is very important to recycle one's works. They save you a lot of time. The downside is that if the recycled work didn't win anything previously, it isn't likely to win anything now.

A few days ago, NUS called to say they had a vacancy. I felt very bitter then, I still feel very bitter now. My application for a job there was sent a few days after I had went for an interview for my current job, so if I had bothered delaying my present job's offer for a few days then, as would be the logical choice to take, I could be in a much more desirable job in a much less corporatized environment now. And to think I even wrote an elaborate cover letter that expressed my interest in exposing myself to the academia. I was so desperate I even asked if I could get back to them next month, after I resign from my current position. They said no. And to think that the vacancy was in the faculty of law. Life is always like that.

Here are two versions of the same song. In the first the female singer looks more pretty and the voices sound better, in the second the instruments are more clear and it is a live performance. I like the way their voices blend together almost seamlessly, the lyrics are technically good. I believe this song wouldn't be so beautiful if it were sung by any other female singer, martha wainwright's voice is so nice here.





How do you enjoy your music? Do you sing along, or do you simply hum. Do you tap your feet, or nod your head, or close your eyes and imagine things? Or maybe you look blankly at the ceiling while it looks back blankly at you?