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Tuesday, Dec 10, 2013 - 21:04 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Heaven And Hell


Heaven And Hell

Half a million pageviews passed!


A Peek Into Purgatory

During the Siege of Mount Hiei, one of Nobunaga's generals strode by himself into one of the main temples, where he found an old monk meditating. Desiring to take his measure of the venerable school's teachings, the samurai bowed respectfully before the monk and enquired: "Might you please explain the concept of heaven and hell to me?"

The monk replied with scorn: "You are nothing but a lout - I will not waste my time with the likes of you!"

The samurai sighed.

"You are expecting me to fly into a rage and draw my katana, at which point you will point out that that is hell, and then I will be so impressed that I will kneel and apologize, after which you will triumphantly say that, see, this is heaven, right?"

The monk was taken aback, and stuttered: "Ah, um, well..."

The samurai pulled a book out from his armour. "Don't bother, I have read the story too. You are simply hiding behind those robes and blindly regurgitating outdated solutions, without considering if they are still applicable. I will spare your lives, but not this rotten edifice that is long overdue for renewal."

"Soldiers! Burn the whole place down!"



Heaven

Finally got around to getting the lump in my left arm removed. It had dogged me for more than a year, and I actually got a referral from the University Health Service in April, but sat on it until it began to trouble me a bit too regularly. Brought the letter to the polyclinic last month, then had it looked at at Alexandra Hospital last week - impressively, they even had staff offering coffee in the waiting area.

They scheduled me for the surgery today, and upon registration I had to change into the surgical gown and all (for some reason, I had thought it might be a wee bit less formal). All I got to see was the scrubbing of the area with what was probably iodine, before the assistants raised a curtain to block my sight from the operation. I suppose it may be hard to keep still when watching someone else cut into one's flesh...

The procedure itself was unexpectedly painless. I had done a bit of reading up on local anesthesia, but was still amazed by how mild the injection was. Further, the numbing was not only localised, but specialised - the fingers on the affected arm retained normal sensations, and I could feel pressure on the area, but almost none of the cutting. That said, the problematic item was deeper than expected, and there was a bit of poking about before it was extracted [photo of arm].

Ever had a pebble in your shoe? Well, that is a fair comparism to what the lump was, with the difference that it couldn't be removed that way. I eagerly asked to view my longtime tormentor, and was presented with a bright-red irregular object, about a couple of centimetres long, and a few millimetres in diameter, more or less what I expected it to be shaped like from my own palpations. Diagnosis reads lymphadenopathy, though the full biopsy is due only in a fortnight, but whatever, I'm just relieved that the irritant is out. No more periodic discomfort when typing!


Descent From Heaven

The recruitment talk question about why J.P. Morgan had its headquarters in Beijing instead of Shanghai kept sticking in the back of my head, only to pop back into focus on coming across the news that they have a "Sons and Daughters" hiring program geared towards winning deals in place, the practice of which was basically an open secret in Hong Kong.

But to be terribly honest, how many banks, dealerships, accounting and law firms, etc don't regard connections as a plus? Their only blunder was to devote a special program to it, ostensibly "to weed out neoptism". Then again, given that the unimpeachable Singapore Armed Forces once maintained a "white horse" system for exactly the same noble motives, with even a Deputy Prime Minister's son forced to serve out his term as a lowly defence medical scientist, it could well have been an innocent initiative that got terribly overblown.

Come to think of it again, our government has to be heavily lauded for not parachuting our retired high-ranking military officers into cushy positions on the boards of big GLCs, into industries where they have next to no prior experience, trusting in the possibly mistaken belief that a few decades of dispensing orders in the armed forces equips one for the travails of the business world. They may be criticised in other areas, but this is one in which they are faultless (ahem)

We need more men like new national football coach Bernard Stange, who has admitted that he doesn't even follow the S.League, because the number of ineligible foreign players has made it irrelevant as a development tool. Tell that to another of our national track-and-field record holders too, who was basically left out because the Singapore Athletic Association simply wanted the shiny medal on their books the easy way. Grassroots? Why bother, when we can just import?


Gateway To Hell

"OF COURSE RUN!

knn zheng hu pay you only a few thousand bucks. ur revolver only got less than 10 bullets.... sekali u is NSF, only paid a few hundred bucks a month

kena killed liao, zheng hu at the most pay a few thousand dollars to your family, then say good job, well done, singapore son, and give your mother some stupid cheap medal or flag or whatever...... which is all made in china"

- astute forumite defending the policemen's decision to flee



Hell

"By all means, let off steam... but don't stop there!
Fight for what you believe in!"

- Incumbent party secretary-general at annual convention


Well, they're nothing if not responsive. Within hours:


With admirably upbeat running commentary
(police car flipping at 3:40, hasty retreat at 7:00, then the fire)


Had I randomly come across the video without the audio, I would have thought, what third-world country is this (but to be fair, countries like France have had their share)?! Well, it's certainly made history, being the first major riot here in over forty years, which should qualify it for future social studies textbooks. Yes, The State's Times had no choice but to use the R-word after photographic and video evidence flooded social media, though there was an initial gallant attempt at euphemism with "mob gathering", in the tradition of jewels such as "sit-in" for "strike" and "ponding" for "flooding". Which brings us to the classic quote: once-in-fifty-year event.

It is true that the relevant minister was being responsible in decrying speculation and politicking while the flames raged, but now, in the cold light of day with no known official fatalities other than the unfortunate accident victim whose death sparked the chaos, there are some very pressing questions that have to be answered, and soon, rather than claiming optimistic projections and dismissing the incident as a one-off. There were certainly heroes, whose contributions should justly be acknowledged, but woe betide the incumbents if they try to turn it into a PR fest and downplay the background signal.


Then: Beginning of Singapore's Golden Age
Today: Over 900000 work permit holders, more to come
(Source: Hardwarezone Forums)
[Quote from 1979 National Day Rally]


Although The State's Times could do nothing but devote the front page to the riot, doubtlessly reluctantly bumping the planned headline of "PM Lee spells out 'new way forward'" (together with smiling photo) to Page Two (which might however be no great loss, given that it's basically a word-for-word repeat from August), it was awe-inspiring to observe how they managed to crank out two whole columns of print, without once mentioning the identity of the mob participants, which left me stupefied by the incalculable perception-shaping powers of the local Division of Journalism and Publishing.

It was left to foreign publications such as The Guardian to be honest in the summing-up: "Singapore shocked by worst riots in decades, as migrant workers vent anger"; that said, the nervous editors couldn't avoid the other R-word either, because the riot just had to happen along Race Course Road, and I can imagine them frantically searching for alternative descriptions of the location before the press deadline came up.

Fine, fine, I understand, the relevant minister is again absolutely correct in stating that emotions are running high, and that [R-word] comments are unproductive (and indeed some comments already have Indian nationals taking pains to disassociate themselves from Bangladeshis, though, as it turns out, most of the arrested were actually Indians). This is the sort of thing that can get dangerous. So, for the record: it should not be race that gets singled out, and indeed on the bright side, the riot had next to nothing to do with race (and as I have noted, foreign workers are really quite nice people); it is the underlying policies that deserve a long, hard look.

Simply put: Don't blame foreigners. Blame the incumbents.

I'll be frank - you bring in nearly a million workers just because they are willing to work for next to nothing, and effectively tax them at a 50% rate on top of that, with their meager pay basically guaranteeing social exclusion from the rest of the populace. What did you expect? Happy sing-alongs? They don't have that much to lose by rioting anyway. Yes, the numbers on the annual reports may sure look pleasing, but people simply don't operate this way. It was coming.

A former Singaporean puts this better than I can:

"For crying out aloud, you don't need a Ph.D. in political science from Oxford to figure this one out, aiyoh. It's so freaking simple - blame the PAP, the PAP are the bad guys, it is the PAP who are at fault. Easy right? Apparently not, because most Singaporeans still cannot bring themselves to blame the PAP and instead choose to blame the foreigners who have come to Singapore to work. Duh. Who let in these foreigners in the first place? If the PAP didn't throw open the doors and roll out the red carpet, would these people be able to come to Singapore in the first place? What is wrong with you Singaporeans - instead of being so freaking racist and xenophobic, why can't you blame the PAP who created this mess in the first place? Why are you so bloody stupid?"

- Limpeh Is Foreign Talent


Yes, it is unacceptable to be inhospitable to new arrivals - but there is a social compact that goes with this, which the incumbents seem to be playing dumb about. Ten percent, twenty percent, and I will be among the first to castigate those holding anti-foreigner sentiments. But nearly fifty percent?

Very unfortunately, all indications are that the incumbents are continuing to wallow in self-delusion, with alcohol already gratefully seized upon as a convenient scapegoat (i.e. their fault lah, not our taiji one ok?), which plays right into their established pattern of wayang piecemeal minor fixes while blissedly turning a blind eye to the big picture. "Not the time to go into the 6.9 million issue again", my foot. It is simply not a matter of "keeping quiet and then nothing will happen", however much the incumbents would love it to be so.

In the same vein as the AIM saga prediction, it is not too hard to see what the Committee of Inquiry will "discover" and recommend [comments in brackets]:

  1. This sort of thing, cannot tolerate one *wags finger* [Abandoned police cars smoulder in the distance. Police go look for meek pro-democracy activists to surround]
  2. We whack those 24 people gao gao liao hor, buck stops with them, dun say residents comprain for years but we turn deaf ear leh [We are going forward with the party when the millionth foreign worker is squeezed in!]
  3. Isolated incident, workers drunk and rowdy, stepped-up police presence and permanent alcohol ban in Little India [After some weeks of general sheepishness, the hundreds of thousands of disenboozed workers migrate en masse to some other hotspot where expensive beer is available - but hey, Little India's now ok! Anything else happen, is different isolated incident]
  4. More can be done for the foreign workers. Employers must look after workers' welfare! However we don't want to impose anything legally, because troublesome lah. We think employers will be mature enough to set boundaries for themselves (heh heh) [As long as every month we suck our S$300 to S$750 from each poor worker, who himself may not get even that amount after all the deductions, you think we care meh? Since when did we start to bother? They injured, can't work, no money to stay on and wait for our red tape to clear, they die their business, don't come look for us]
  5. Workers come here must behave hor, if more shit happens at most we tell them not to congregate lor [Each guy one square metre, only need one square kilometre in total, they can find the space one lah. We have about 700 square km, where got overcrowding? They can find some way to bend the laws of physics]
  6. Or we confine them to their dorms on their only day off per week lor [So what if that's no better than a prison sentence, and at least they don't have to work in prison? Or that our forced labour situation is so bad that even our ally can't help but condemn us? What can the workers do? Flip cars over and set them on fire?]
  7. No fundamental concerns. More good years ahead! All hail one hundred thousand new arrivals each year!



War zone? No, Little India


Get it straight - the PAP of today is not the PAP of yesteryear.


Purgatory Revisited

From The Song of Roland:

Oliver begged Roland three times to blow his horn for Charlemagne to return, but Roland was too proud of his own vision to do the sensible thing and reverse course, despite all evidence to the contrary, and leads his own hopelessly outnumbered people onward to their inevitable doom.

When only a handful of his men are left, Roland finally recognizes the enormity of his folly and wants to blow his horn at last, but this time Oliver is against it, furious at Roland for not having done so when it could still have done some good. Nevertheless, Roland blows the horn so hard that the blood vessels in his head burst, and he dies.

"The best time to change was twenty years ago.
The second best time is today."



Without an honest heart as compass...
My flower, withered between/The pages two and three




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Next: Off The Hook


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The Book of Changes (Part II)
The Book of Changes (Part I)
Aftermaths
The Issue Issue
And There Were Four
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