Moved!

Parts of us have moved over to Second Class on WordPress.This would the more intelligent and critical lot.

The rest of us have elected to go on to Double Yellow Line on WordPress.This would be the more inane and irreverent lot.

In both cases, the quality of programming remains more or less the same.

Given the stop-start nature of Anonymous Noises, we’ve decided to give it a rest and maybe someday, it’ll come alive again. In the meantime, do update your links or add new ones.

Till then.

World Class Absurdities

This has to be a year of rank absurdities as far as world affairs are concerned.

Oil prices at $134 per barrel or so and soaring commodities prices asides, there are other aspects of global life that evoke a reaction of despair, hand wringing and general frustration.

First, there is Zimbabawe. It is interesting to see some parallels in this case. In the face of escalating violence, political gangsterism and repression, which are in themselves mild understatements in Zimbabwe, the august African Union has done little more than cursorily slap the wrist of the paramount dictator Robert Mugabe who has tempted fate by declaring that no one could him from the office, not the people, not the West and that only God who appointed him could do so. Before we go tut-tutting at this apparent political inaction and collective regional impotence, may I remind the reader that in the face of the Burmese government’s actions over the last two decades or so, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have done much of the same in the name of neighbourliness and non-intervention in domestic affairs. So much for the moral high horse there.

In another development, Exxon Mobil, which is making heaps of money from the abovementioned oil prices, has managed to reduce the amount of punitive charges for it has to pay for the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 from US$5 billion to a paltry US$500 million. Lest you are aghast at the massive sum imposed on them, please be informed that Exxon Mobil made US$40 billion in profits for 2007 and this sum, given the oil prices at the moment, is expected to climb further. For this, I am not going to pump a single drop of petrol at Esso ever again, even though it probably makes not even a nano-dent in the US$40 billion (and more) that they will make this year. Someone once told me that the name Esso, which is the Exxon Mobil brand name, represented the letters “S” and “O”, which when put together stood for Standard Oil. I think they stand for something else altogether.

An ex-investment banker is apparently parading himself up and down Wall Street with a billboard around his body asking for jobs. The irony is that when the times were good, these investment dimwits from Bear Stearns, Citibank, Merrill Lynch and their ilk, were rolling in it and having not a care about the subprime debacle they were creating. Now that the bubble has burst and the party is over, they make themselves up to look like victims, despite the fact that others have suffered and will be suffering due to their desire for accountability to the shareholders and the bottom line, read profits.  Looks like the age of “it’s not my fault” is well and alive in the United States of America.

All these news reports are courtesy on the Beeb, which can be heard on FM 88.9 in Singapore.

Leave The Danes Alone!

I find it amusing that once again, in the space of slightly over a year, Denmark has made the news in Singapore again. In one of those uselessly opinionated and subjective pieces, the local press has trumpeted the choice between “Sunny Singapore” or Copenhagen. Apparently, it is not enough to have made it into the most liveable cities of the world list alongside Copenhagen and Yokohama. The desire to be No. 1 and trump everyone, much like an elementary school boy really, has led to deep and soul-searching (note the sarcasm) explorations into the merits of our sunny isle and the supposedly closed and insular nature of Danish society that makes it really a dreary place to live it. Is there really a need for this sort of adversarial comparision everytime a list comes up?

And leave the Danes alone. They did not ask to be showcased and ranked alongside our pimped and paraded sunny little isle in the tropical sun.

[...]

On Sunday, while instructing on Hobbes and Rosseau and the theory of seperation of powers and checks and balances. The most perfect checks and balances in the world are useless if the checks and balances fail to check and balance.

We Support Obama

Those of you who know me would know that I do not, as a rule, trust politicians and the rhetoric they spout. This is especially so in the case of memoirs and  (auto)biographies published after having held high office in one form or another. Even more so would be those works that claim to tell the definitive story or claim to provide the authoritative take on solving (insert major problem threatening any society/mankind here). Then there are those who provide no solutions but instead launch interminable polemics that stem from the general premise that “I am right, you are wrong. All of you.”

This time, however, I will deviate from my usual take and put a “We Support Obama” sticker on this blog.

Having read large chunks of The Audacity of Hope, I have come to admire a man who is deeply convicted that the troubled and possibly bankrupt, in more ways than one, system of liberal democracy in American can be salvaged, reformed and with this, restore itself in the eyes of the people it claims to serve. The man has ideas. Not all of them are good and you might disagree, or perhaps even disdain some of them. Yet, the man has tempered his exposition with a degree of humility and humanity that eludes many such political statements. He does not claim to have all the ideas to solve the innumerable problems that besets the country and he is well acquainted with the problems and failings of the system. And yet, he believes. And he hopes. And this is the sheer audacity which I salute.

Unreal

I am no economist but to increase road pricing tariffs at a time when skyrocketing costs are fuelling rampant inflation smacks of either a total detachment from reality or a poor grasp of economic fundamentals. This plus the fact that increasing rates to ease road congestion when the public transport network is still lacking in comprehensiveness and coverage shows that these bureaucrats have an utter lack of empathy with the public when it comes to travelling. Unless, of course, miracles have become part of the Land Transport Authority’s (LTA) repetoire and by casting the ERP spell, new expressways and subway lines will miraculousy erupt overnight like mushrooms after rain. If so, then I rest my case.

Tutorial

As a parting shot after drinks earlier on, a sociologist friend of mine told me, “Human beings are not born to live in a capitalist society!” This came after a long conversation about consumerism, affluenza, acquisitiveness, credit card debt, bad debts, distortions in society, class, social stratification and suffering.

Each time I meet up with him, it is like going for a tutorial at the university. I am grateful to have friends like these. They keep the mind sharp and the soul sane.

Exercise

Sitting at a desk in the quiet library of the National Institute of Education, which is adjacent to the training grounds of the Singapore Armed Forces, one can hear the muted sounds of blanks and thunderflashes even through the thick glass that insulates the library from most of the noise outside. Occasionally, the explosion is loud enough to cause the glass panes to vibrate ever so slightly.

As I sit and type this while on a brief break from my work, these sounds remind me of the many students I have had who have humped (to use a Vietnam War era term) and are humping the hills of these training grounds and of my own youth fifteen years ago as a raw recruit in the Singapore Armed Forces. Now people like Zheng Hao, Kani and Bloke are doing the same things that we did as young(er) men back then with the same type of equipment and probably mouthing the same curses. Somehow, the smell of sweat mixed with camouflage cream is something that one does not forget easily.

How time flies.

So as they sweat in the sweltering heat and battle fatigue and combat physical exhaustion, I wrestle with my intellect and wit in the air-conditioned comfort of the cool and quiet ivory tower.