If today was a fairy-tale…

From http://www.teenink.com/opinion/discrimination/article/181533/Sexism-in-Fantasyland/

Sexism in Fantasyland

By MissMaegan, Port St. Lucie, FL

And so the story ends. The dashing prince in his tasseled, shoulder-padded suit bends down to kiss her lips. He swoops her up in his arms and gingerly places her on the white stallion. Then the perfect couple gallops toward the prince’s lavish castle, its two towers silhouetted against the orange sunset with its turrets poking holes in the fluffy clouds. Oh, and of course, she lives happily ever after. Bleh.

These sappy, wistful endings seem to be the uniform finish of fairy tales. Back in the days of Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, fairy tales were the wish fulfillment of medieval-day peasant girls.

Think of the fairy tales you know – the popular gooey ones with princes and kisses. Now think of the boring, vapid girls who star in them. Their grand role is to sit pretty and mope around until a handsome hero comes to their salvation. It’s a popular case of the classic someday-my-prince-will-come syndrome.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s famous “Cinderella,” Cindy’s simple jobs consist of cooking, cleaning, crying until a fairy godmother shows up, wearing a pretty dress, being home on time, and ultimately being rescued from slavery to her step-family by none other than … Prince Charming.

Now ponder Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” who lives “under the sea, under the sea.” Clad in just a skimpy seashell bra that would shame a Victoria’s Secret model, Ariel starts out as a spunky, happy-go-lucky redhead who rebels against her stern father’s rules. But as soon as her sky blue eyes glimpse her prince, she becomes meek and shy. And since trading her beautiful voice for a pair of nice legs was her pact with the sea witch, Ariel must capture his heart with just her looks and bashful smiles. Not exactly a good message to send to children, Hans. The story ends just as the star-struck mermaid wants. The evil sea witch is defeated, Ariel’s voice is restored, and the prince is hers. Of course, in the process she gives up her family, underwater friends, her home, her royal title, and everything she knows and loves – all for a man. But hey, whatever makes you happy, Princess.

Think of the Grimm Brothers’ “Snow White.” Snow White herself is described as a translucent beauty with raven hair and blood-red lips. She also happens to be meek, sweet, and a great cook and housewife. The fairy tale depicts women as beauty-crazed fanatics in desperate need of male protection. When Snowy’s evil queen stepmother declares that she wants her stepdaughter’s heart cut out of her chest so she can eat it, Snow White runs away to the forest. At first, it seems this darling femme might actually have an adventure for herself, but alas, no. As soon as she enters the forest, the silly nit joins up with seven dwarves and washes, cooks and cleans for them in return for protection. Apparently, male protection is what Snowy needs, even if they are only two-and-a-half feet tall.

And you can add “vulnerable” and “idiotic” to the list of negative traits fairy tales attribute to women. After all, only an idiot would open the door to a gnarly, creepy old woman in a black cape and actually buy apples from her. Especially if she gives you a hint they’re enchanted. And when she falls into a death-like coma, who wakes Snowy up? You got it … another predictable, face-sucking prince.

And now a different fairy-tale star: Rapunzel. Trapped in a tower by an evil witch who kidnapped her at birth, Rapunzel somehow manages to keep her 100-foot-long tresses shiny and clean with no running water or Herbal Essence shampoo. Her fabulous escapade is to “let down her hair” out of a window. It’s the prince’s job to climb up the side of the tower using her locks. Anyone who’s ever tried to climb a rope, even with knots in it, knows how hard that must have been. Vain ‘Punzel refuses to chop off her lid to get herself out of the tower, so instead she slowly knits a ladder, which adds weeks to her escape date. Then she’s stupid enough to tip off her witchy captor. Even after thorns blind her darling hero, he still commandeers the final escape and provides transportation to his castle.

Think of Mulan. This Chinese girl probably is the best fairy-tale subject out there. She fights, saves the man she loves, kills the Huns, and gets to shoot cannons. Of course, her story is set back in sexist Imperial China, where, as a woman, she is expected to serve her husband. The only way Mulan gets ahead in life and makes friends is by disguising herself as a man. When the truth finally comes out, Mulan’s friends shun her. This fairy tale clearly supports the idea that being born female is a bad thing.

Who remembers the story of Rumpelstiltskin? Oddly enough, the girl we must call our heroine doesn’t even get a name. The creepy, baby-stealing stalker is the villain who snags the title. The lovely miller’s daughter responds to the news that she must spin straw into gold or die, by crying and sniveling. Then when she realizes she must give up her baby, she cries and snivels some more. Throughout the tale, she does almost nothing for herself besides producing enough tears to water a cotton field. The only reason Mr. Rumpelstiltskin doesn’t triumph in the end is dumb luck, happenstance, and a faithful male messenger who informs his queen what he heard the little man sing at the campfire.

All of the classic fairy-tale females end up being saved by masculine heroes. The only women in the tales with any cunning, wit, cleverness, boldness, or strength are hideous hags, murderous witches, and beauty-obsessed stepmothers. The young, lovely heroines are meek, good, obedient, submissive, and naturally weaker and inferior to their heroes. We need more heroines with independent traits.

We need a Rapunzel with the brains to have cut off her hair and climbed down it years ago. We need a Gretel who saves her beloved brother. We need a Beauty to rescue her Beast. We need a Bella to fight alongside her Edward, and a Maid Marian to spring her beloved Robin Hood out of prison. We need a Cinderella who stands up to her stepmother. At least can we have a Snow White who won’t open the door to strange, wizened women?

We need a gal with guts, derring-do, moxie, gumption, and agency. We need female characters who can fight for themselves, and maybe pick up true love along the way. We, along with the rest of America, need a good dose of fresh, unadulterated girl-power.

*

I am just reminded of the one and only romance novel I’ve ever read in my life and that’s The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks. I finished it in half a day, and it was surprisingly engaging. I had difficulty putting the book down, I remember. The gender roles are not as stereotypical as those of the fairy-tales, but nonetheless you can’t help but wonder if Noah and Allie could switch roles. It probably would not work, considering the target audience, and in many societies there are still the prescribed roles for men and women–what constitutes gentlemanly behaviour, what a woman should not do…Like what MissMaegan said about her article, “Fairytales can be just as sexist to men. After all, in Fantasyland, a man isn’t worth his salt unless he can kill a dragon.”

<Insert Plato’s printouts here, about family & society & gender & education & everything else…>

Should we be concerned about anything at all, and other short stories

“For though he was gentle and kind, it was Quasimodo’s crime to have been born hideously deformed. But one day his heart would prove to be a thing of rare beauty. She was Esmerelda. The victim of a coward’s jealous rage, she is unjustly convicted of a crime she didn’t commit. Her sentence is death by hanging.”

Nothing quite puts it the way this extract does. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo, should have been resurrected in a few of the questions in Prelim Paper 1 this year (eg: Q8 and Q11), but that was not to be with the scripts I marked (Q8, 9, 10 & 11). You don’t really need Quasimodo, actually, and substance and style are on equal footing. What are less forgivable are some of the crimes that some candidates commit. Here I post documents (censored or otherwise, as indicated by the description) related to the scripts I’d come across.

(1) Examiners’ report for Q8 (this should be printed for all in a week’s time)

(2) Examiners’ report for Q11 (this should be printed for all in a week’s time)

(3) Statistics of scores (useless info unless you love statistics and Excel sheets)

(4) Comments & corrections on marking scheme for Q8, 9 & 11 (this may not be edited in time by our new Chief for a clean print, and in case you don’t receive the amended version, check that against this document)

(5) Comments & corrections on marking scheme for Q4 & 12 (this should have already been factored in in the version which you will receive)

(6) Real cases of funny language, use of Ex & challenging the Q (this will not be printed)

I also have quite a few essays which scored above 30m and if you are interested in taking a look, let me know.

***

It just feels good to be out of bed again. Had to spend the entire Wednesday resting due to some rust-taste cockles in the char kway teow I ate for lunch from Adam Road Food Centre on Tuesday. Maybe it’s not the see-harm. It might be the mouldy ham I ate for Tueday dinner. Or the mouldy grapes. All ready and recovered in time for the final lecture tomorrow…

The away-goal rule

In football, the away-goal is worth 1.5 times more than a goal scored on home ground. It has been so since 1970, according to Football365’s John Nicholson. It’s about reinventing the game. Such an observation holds in life sometimes:

August 25, 2010

A Weird Way of Thinking Has Prevailed Worldwide

By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS (The NY Times)

CORTES, CANADA — Imagine a country whose inhabitants eat human flesh, wear only pink hats to sleep and banish children into the forest to raise themselves until adulthood.

Now imagine that this country dominates the study of psychology worldwide. Its universities have the best facilities, which draw the best scholars, who write the best papers. Their research subjects are the flesh-eating, pink-hat-wearing, forest-reared locals.

When these psychologists write about their own country, all is well. But things deteriorate when they generalize about human nature.

They view behaviors that are globally commonplace — say, vegetarianism — as deviant. Human nature, as they define it, reflects little of the actual diversity of humankind.

This scenario may sound preposterous. But if a provocative new study is to be believed, the world already lives in such a situation — except that it is American undergraduates, not flesh-eating forest dwellers, who monopolize our knowledge of human nature.

In the study, published last month in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan — all psychologists at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver — condemn their field’s quest for human universals.

Psychologists claim to speak of human nature, the study argues, but they have mostly been telling us about a group of WEIRD outliers, as the study calls them — Westernized, educated people from industrialized, rich democracies.

According to the study, 68 percent of research subjects in a sample of hundreds of studies in leading psychology journals came from the United States, and 96 percent from Western industrialized nations. Of the American subjects, 67 percent were undergraduates studying psychology — making a randomly selected American undergraduate 4,000 times likelier to be a subject than a random non-Westerner.

Western psychologists routinely generalize about “human” traits from data on this slender subpopulation, and psychologists elsewhere cite these papers as evidence.

In itself, such extrapolation is hardly fatal. Freud built his account of human behavior from his work on patients in Vienna and generalized for the world. So many great analysts of human nature, from Aristotle to the Buddha, reached for transcendent human truths despite limited contact with the range of humanity.

The Canadian study’s claim is not to invalidate all extrapolation so much as to suggest that American undergraduates may be especially unsuitable for it.

The study’s method was to analyze a mountain of published, peer-reviewed psychology papers. It found evidence both of a narrow research base and of the eccentricity of that base. Among the many peculiarities of the usual subjects who serve as “universal man” are these, the study found:

American subjects disproportionately prize choice and individualism. In a survey of six Western societies, only Americans preferred a choice of 50 ice creams to 10. Studies have found that Americans are all but alone in giving newborns their own room.

Americans are also peculiar in the so-called Ultimatum Game, in which a subject receives money and must make an offer to share it. The second subject can accept or reject the offer, but if it is rejected, neither subject gets paid.

Americans playing the game are fair in the extreme, making higher offers than most. But they are also outliers in another way. In various places, including Russia and China, psychologists observe the rejection of excessive generosity — a demurring when offered too much. This behavior is absent from American undergraduates.

The study’s list goes on and on. Westerners tend to define themselves by psychological traits, and non-Westerners by relationships. In some languages, including English, directions are built around the self (“Take a right after the church”), while in other languages, they refer to immovable objects (“It is behind the church”).

Americans are worse than many at overcoming common optical illusions about the length of lines. But they are better than East Asians at recalling an object when the background changes, perhaps because the latter focus on context.

The data on these differences are patchy, the study’s authors acknowledge. Not enough work has been done on human variation. The Canadian attempt was simply to synthesize the existing research and to establish with their synthesis that psychological sameness is an implausible assumption.

Some critics of the study have suggested that there are universals underlying surface differences, and that the WEIRD variables may not be the right ones. But there has been little dispute about the premise that psychologists have extrapolated from an outlying few the ways of the global many.

It is an extrapolation with consequences. Democracy promoters tell us that all humans feel the same way about authority, despite evidence of diversity. Economists say that all humans are self-interested rational actors, though many succumb to selfless and irrational pursuits. Abstract rights are proclaimed for all humans, overlooking the fact that many prefer their ethics in more grounded, context-specific ways.

China, India and many other societies shy away from such universalizing. Their thinkers avoid proclaiming that all humans do this or do that simply because the Chinese or the Indians do. If they began to do so, how might things change?

For now, those outside the West continue to feel a certain pressure from beyond to think in ways not their own. The television sitcoms they watch, the books they read, the superheroes they grow up with, the PowerPoint presentations they give — these were often designed with someone else’s psychology foremost in mind, on the hope that they fit universally.

One response to the WEIRD study, by the psychologist Paul Rozin, is that extrapolating from Americans is acceptable because the world is Americanizing. “The U.S. is in the vanguard of the global world,” he said, according to Science magazine, “and may provide a glimpse into the future.”

But it is also possible that people around the world are not simply in the process of becoming like American undergraduates, and relying on WEIRD subjects can make others feel alienated, with their ways of thinking framed as deviant, not different.

Among the less-examined facets of globalization is its psychic pressure: a force that makes people feel that they are playing by others’ rules, that makes their own home turf feel like an opponent’s stadium. In this WEIRD people’s world, so many only know away games.

(From ST)

Regional Frustrations

I was visibly upset and amused at the same time when I once again am reminded that Ang Mo Kio is not part of Singapore. I was trying to play The Noose in class today and xinmsn, an official initiative between Microsoft and Singapore, told me “the video is not available in my region”. I can access it in Jurong, though.

Unlike Desperate Housewives, which is available on many illegal sites allowed in Ang Mo Kio, The Noose has not and probably will never attain international recognition and so will not be available on any other sites.

Do check this out when you can (or are not in AMK): The Noose 3 Episode 3. It will make you feel proud (or ashamed) to be a Singaporean. Very funny.

Being humane

Never laugh at one’s aspirations, because it will show others the manners you lack. (This too comes from Desperate Housewives Season 6 Episode 7 [I think], which also indirectly puts teachers and foreign workers on a pedestal!) Having manners like being polite and tactful are a rare quality in social animals called humans nowadays. Perhaps the Americans might be readily blamed (by the British), for such degeneration which parallelled the simplification of the language.

This ecareers.sg portal is a wonderful initiative by the Ministry in helping children plan ahead, and the formality of the portal does reflect the kind of manners required in a job hunt. (That’s why I give it a place here in this post, instead of a spot on the blogroll on the right, which is where you can find the link to my clinic opening hours.)

School is the place to start the habituation of good manners. When things go wrong in future, for instance one’s failure to observe the good manner of “verbal hygiene” (to borrow the term from Deborah Cameron) or to abide by the law (think of acts like graffiti or sexual crimes as futher degeneration of the lack of manners and morals), prison is the only place where your ‘problems’ will be rectified and good manners re-instituted.

Whether or not this particular prison makes sense is your call:

Norway Builds the World’s Most Humane Prison

By William Lee Adams

May 10, 2010

By the time the trumpets sound, the candles have been lit and the salmon platters garnished. Harald V, King of Norway, enters the room, and 200 guests stand to greet him. Then a chorus of 30 men and women, each wearing a blue police uniform, launches into a spirited rendition of “We Are the World.” This isn’t cabaret night at Oslo’s Royal Palace. It’s a gala to inaugurate Halden Fengsel, Norway’s newest prison.

Ten years and 1.5 billion Norwegian kroner ($252 million) in the making, Halden is spread over 75 acres (30 hectares) of gently sloping forest in southeastern Norway. The facility boasts amenities like a sound studio, jogging trails and a freestanding two-bedroom house where inmates can host their families during overnight visits. Unlike many American prisons, the air isn’t tinged with the smell of sweat and urine. Instead, the scent of orange sorbet emanates from the “kitchen laboratory” where inmates take cooking courses. “In the Norwegian prison system, there’s a focus on human rights and respect,” says Are Hoidal, the prison’s governor. “We don’t see any of this as unusual.”

Halden, Norway’s second largest prison, with a capacity of 252 inmates, opened on April 8. It embodies the guiding principles of the country’s penal system: that repressive prisons do not work and that treating prisoners humanely boosts their chances of reintegrating into society. “When they arrive, many of them are in bad shape,” Hoidal says, noting that Halden houses drug dealers, murderers and rapists, among others. “We want to build them up, give them confidence through education and work and have them leave as better people.” Countries track recidivism rates differently, but even an imperfect comparison suggests the Norwegian model works. Within two years of their release, 20% of Norway’s prisoners end up back in jail. In the U.K. and the U.S., the figure hovers between 50% and 60%. Of course, a low level of criminality gives Norway a massive advantage. Its prison roll lists a mere 3,300, or 69 per 100,000 people, compared with 2.3 million in the U.S., or 753 per 100,000 — the highest rate in the world.

Design plays a key role in Halden’s rehabilitation efforts. “The most important thing is that the prison looks as much like the outside world as possible,” says Hans Henrik Hoilund, one of the prison’s architects. To avoid an institutional feel, exteriors are not concrete but made of bricks, galvanized steel and larch; the buildings seem to have grown organically from the woodlands. And while there is one obvious symbol of incarceration — a 20-ft. (6 m) concrete security wall along the prison’s perimeter — trees obscure it, and its top has been rounded off, Hoilund says, “so it isn’t too hostile.”

The cells rival well-appointed college dorm rooms, with their flat-screen TVs and minifridges. Designers chose long vertical windows for the rooms because they let in more sunlight. There are no bars. Every 10 to 12 cells share a living room and kitchen. With their stainless-steel countertops, wraparound sofas and birch-colored coffee tables, they resemble Ikea showrooms.

Halden’s greatest asset, though, may be the strong relationship between staff and inmates. Prison guards don’t carry guns — that creates unnecessary intimidation and social distance — and they routinely eat meals and play sports with the inmates. “Many of the prisoners come from bad homes, so we wanted to create a sense of family,” says architect Per Hojgaard Nielsen. Half the guards are women — Hoidal believes this decreases aggression — and prisoners receive questionnaires asking how their experience in prison can be improved.

There’s plenty of enthusiasm for transforming lives. “None of us were forced to work here. We chose to,” says Charlott-Renee Sandvik Clasen, a music teacher in the prison and a member of Halden’s security-guard chorus. “Our goal is to give all the prisoners — we call them our pupils — a meaningful life inside these walls.” It’s warmth like that, not the expensive television sets, that will likely have the most lasting impact.

*

When something makes you laugh and think, it should be something you will remember for a longer time than the knowledge of what you ate for breakfast. At The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at Changi Airport Terminal 3 on Saturday, while I was enjoying my Salmon and Egg Sandwich and coffee, and marking, something dawned on me: I was actually not displaying proper manners! I was multitasking, eating and marking. I was reading through the lines when I stumbled upon the one which talks about the hectic daily grind and how people walk and eat or work and eat. While there isn’t much of a choice for us, it may actually not be bad manners if it is something that has been largely accepted by society, especially that of an urban one and such capability is actually a concrete jungle survival skill.

And so it is much ado about survival that people here have been reminded so frequently that we don’t have any natural resources but ourselves to build a prosperous future. And unfortunately, we are not reproducing fast enough over the decades. The ruling party’s policies have been deemed as ineffective by many, but there’s nothing much the policymakers can really do. Perhaps we need a new party…sex party.

Sex Party promises ‘real action’ for Australians

The Australian Sex Party on Tuesday promised to spice up campaigning for next month’s elections with a manifesto “unlike Australia had ever seen before”

By Agence France-Presse, Updated: 20/07/2010

Party chief Fiona Patten launched a risque national campaign at a Melbourne bar, saying her policies “would make (opposition Leader) Tony Abbott’s hair stand on end and would turn (Prime Minister) Julia Gillard’s hair grey”. prospective

“We’ve always been forward and we actually enjoy real action,” Patten said, mocking Gillard and Abbott’s “Moving Australia Forward” and “Stand Up For Real Action” slogans.

The party’s policies include legalising euthanasia, decriminalising all drugs for personal use, and watering down strict anti-pornography laws.

Although sure to attract criticism from church groups and other conservative elements in society, Patten said it was time an Australian political party pushed the boundaries.

Patten said personal freedom issues affect people’s lives more often than tax or immigration, and wanted to break down “nanny state” policies that she said had been built up over several decades by the major parties.

While the party will struggle for mainstream support, Patten remained confident of at least one Sex Party candidate being elected to the country’s Senate.

“In the privacy of the polling booth, anything could happen,” she said.

The Sex Party is running a candidate against Abbott in his Sydney electorate, a comedian who has offered to doorknock voters wearing a “mankini” — a type of bikini designed for men.

*

Humour or not, I don’t want to know what’s happening down under.

But seriously, such a topic has become blatant and brazen in contemporary time, and formality has been deemed by some to be an attempt at elitism and discrimination. When there is a “high variety” and a “low variety” of some thing, like language or humour or music, snobbery is rife (according to some, while many would kindly refuse to comment).

This good essay (a really long read) sums up the history: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/allen/ch5.html (THE REVOLUTION IN MANNERS AND MORALS).

Not quite driving blindfolded

It wasn’t exactly driving blindfolded, but I still had to drive with more care than a Channel Newsasia newscaster would watch her grammar.

Drove myself to the SGH A&E today and I was beginning to feel riled by the jams caused by the plant pruning on Sundays. If you could refer to the past arguments put forth by various people about caring for the welfare of the foreign workers who had to do the job in the middle of the night, you might not have felt the awkwardness of the premises. I remember one of those reasons given is that foreign workers will run a higher risk of being run down by crazy motorists in the blanket of darkness. Or simply, it’s a lack of welfare to get people to work on such jobs at night.

I’m not even going to talk about doctors and other professionals who have to work shifts. There are certainly other blue-collared workers out there who do such work. When work needs to be done, it will be done. I have the right to say this because of where I come from.

If there are crazy motorists in the blanket of the night, shouldn’t they be removed from the roads instead of the workers?

But it’s really surprising that the authority decided so quickly to listen to the voice of the people (whose letters were published in the ST).

Anyhow, I got to the hospital, checked myself into the A&E, waited for a while, had the diagnostic tests done, waited for some time, saw how much of a melting pot of nationalities Singapore has become and is becoming, overheard a father and son chat on how pretty the ophthalmologist is, confirmed the tear on my right retina, and finally had it lasered by the ophthalmologist’s registrar. Believe you me, it’s not that painful. Just uncomfortable bearing with the strobes of amber, red and green light (not the traffic lights!) I could sometimes feel the burning sensation, but the burning smell was what lingered on. I wondered if I lost any eye-lash. Then I got led back to the A&E by the ophthalmologist, gulped down a couple of panadol for my neck, took my MC, and rested a while before driving home really carefully. I think my shades are the best investment I made this year. I’m still wearing them now at 12.30am.

Well, time for bed to wake on time for e-learning tomorrow! The real stuff!

Reservations about “withholdings”

Dear inquisitive learners who had reservations about “reservations” and “withholdings”,

I did a quick, informal collocation check on Google at 3.40pm on Jul 15, 2010, and found about 430000 hits only for “withholdings”. Among these hits, there were not many (if any at all) which used the word in the context of “reservations”.

I also did a check on my trustworthy Oxford Concise 10th Ed and there is no such word, the same goes for TheFreeDictionary (the third definition is not referring to “reservations”; it’s referring to the act of withholding (v.) something, actually. It is “the act of retaining something”.) “Retaining something” is too vague in the context (retaining happiness?) while “the act of” itself signals that it is an action: it’s not a mental experience. Compare this to “hesitation” or “doubts”. By the definition of the word itself, and you don’t even have to look at the collocation (unless you are still not convinced), the truth has been proven.

But I am glad this was discussed (though briefly) in class, because it allowed me to look at another aspect of the Vocabulary: collocation. As I’ve explained, certain phrases don’t come so naturally together and these can be checked by looking at the collocations of the words. One way to do so is through a Google search, as I’ve just mentioned. The meanings may be lost if the expression of the phrase is “awkward” because they don’t collocate so readily (frequently), like “fake teeth” as opposed to “false teeth”.

Usually with regard to Vocabulary we look at collocations only when connotations and contextual denotations have not been sufficient in allowing us to determine the acceptability of the response.

Yours truly

Postscript: Concluding by observation is not a weakness in research methodology, if anyone ever believes so, because it is a study of human practices and trends–what is acceptable and what is unnatural. There are theories or frameworks to adhere to, and it is as rigorous as any ‘biological experiments’.

Of Choice, Happiness & Destiny

Money buys happiness – but not forever

The Straits Times, April 1, 2010 By David Brooks TWO things happened to Sandra Bullock last month. First, she won an Academy Award for best actress. Then came the news reports claiming that her husband is an adulterous jerk. So the philosophic question of the day is: Would you take that as a deal? Would you exchange a tremendous professional triumph for a severe personal blow? Sure, an Academy Award is nothing to sneeze at. Bullock has earned the admiration of her peers in a way very few experience. She’ll make more money for years to come. She may even live longer. Research by Mr Donald A. Redelmeier and Mr Sheldon M. Singh has found that, on average, Oscar winners live nearly four years longer than nominees who don’t win. Nonetheless, if you had to take more than three seconds to think about this question, then you are absolutely crazy. Marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining personal well-being. If you have a successful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy. If you have an unsuccessful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many career triumphs you record, you will remain significantly unfulfilled. This isn’t just sermonising. This is the age of research, so there’s data to back this up. Over the past few decades, teams of researchers have been studying happiness. Their work, which seemed flimsy at first, has developed an impressive rigour, and one of the key findings is that, just as the old sages predicted, worldly success has shallow roots while interpersonal bonds permeate through and through. For example, the relationship between happiness and income is complicated, and after a point, tenuous. It is true that poor nations become happier as they become middle-class nations. But once the basic necessities have been achieved, future income is lightly connected to well-being. Growing countries are slightly less happy than countries with slower growth rates, according to Ms Carol Graham of the Brookings Institution and Mr Eduardo Lora. The United States is much richer than it was 50 years ago, but this has produced no measurable increase in overall happiness. On the other hand, it has become a much more unequal country, but this inequality doesn’t seem to have reduced national happiness. On a personal scale, winning the lottery doesn’t seem to produce lasting gains in a person’s well-being. People aren’t happiest during the years when they are winning the most promotions. Instead, people are happy in their 20s, dip in middle age and then, on average, hit peak happiness just after retirement at age 65. People get slightly happier as they climb the income scale, but this depends on how they experience growth. Does wealth inflame unrealistic expectations? Does it destabilise settled relationships? Or does it flow from a virtuous circle in which an interesting job produces hard work that in turn leads to more interesting opportunities? If the relationship between money and well-being is complicated, the correspondence between personal relationships and happiness is not. The daily activities most associated with happiness are sex, socialising after work and having dinner with others. The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting. According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than US$100,000 (S$140,000) a year. If you want to find a good place to live, just ask people if they trust their neighbours. Levels of social trust vary enormously, but countries with high social trust have happier people, better health, more efficient government, more economic growth and less fear of crime (regardless of whether actual crime rates are increasing or decreasing). The overall impression from this research is that economic and professional success exists on the surface of life, and that they emerge out of interpersonal relationships, which are much deeper and more important. The second impression is that most of us pay attention to the wrong things. Most people vastly overestimate the extent to which more money would improve our lives. Most schools and colleges spend too much time preparing students for careers and not enough preparing them to make social decisions. Most governments release a tonne of data on economic trends but not enough on trust and other social conditions. In short, modern societies have developed vast institutions oriented around the things that are easy to count, not around the things that matter most. They have an affinity for material concerns and a primordial fear of moral and social ones. This may be changing. There is a rash of compelling books – including The Hidden Wealth Of Nations by David Halpern and The Politics Of Happiness by Derek Bok – that argue that public institutions should pay attention to well-being and not just material growth narrowly conceived. Governments keep initiating policies they think will produce prosperity, only to get sacked, time and again, from their spiritual blind side. NEW YORK TIMES

According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than US$100,000 (S$140,000) a year.

CAM Elective in May 2010

This is a public announcement for anyone who is interested in knowing more about CAM. The elective will be offered in May 2010 (venue, specific date & time) will be announced at a later date. This is a must-go event for those who dislike Maslow.

In the meantime, here’s a Straits Times report on CRAP (Culture, Romance, Art, Politics):

Mar 27, 2010

Denmark’s Little Mermaid to guest-star at Shanghai Expo

SHANGHAI: For nearly 100 years, the heartbroken Little Mermaid has been sitting on a rock looking out over Copenhagen’s port in Denmark, but now the sculpture based on the famous fairytale is heading for China.

The 1913 bronze statue, created by Danish sculptor Edvard Eriksen, measures 1.65m and weighs 175kg, and is a major tourist attraction in Copenhagen.

But the Little Mermaid’s life has not always been easy. She has been beheaded twice, had her arm cut off once, was blown off her rock in 2003, and was dressed in a Muslim headscarf two years ago in a protest.

Still, she had never left her native country – until now.

On Thursday, hundreds thronged the Copenhagen harbour, dancing, singing and waving flags to bid farewell to the Little Mermaid sculpture as she was lifted from her perch by a crane and lowered into the back of a truck.

She will be the star guest in the Danish Pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai, in eastern China, which opens on May 1 and runs until Oct 31. Details about her journey were not revealed due to security issues.

Mr Frank Jensen, Lord Mayor of the City of Copenhagen, said in a statement that the loan of The Little Mermaid was part of a cultural exchange between Denmark and China, even though the plan created a heated debate in Denmark when announced.

‘I am convinced that she will be an excellent ambassador of Denmark, particularly since the Chinese are already very fond of Hans Christian Andersen and his fairytales,’ he said in a statement.

Danish author Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, published in 1837, is a sad story about a mermaid who falls in love with a prince and gives up her life in the sea and her tail for legs.

But the prince marries someone else and she is left broken-hearted, throwing herself into the sea and dissolving into foam.

The fairytale has been adapted many times into stage shows and into a Disney movie.

Her departure from Copenhagen will not leave the harbour empty.

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has created a video installation to fill in for her. The multimedia artwork will include a live broadcast of the statue in Shanghai.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

* For a picture of the beautiful mermaid, check out the previous post!

Gossip Page (GP)

Caught the Oscars previously and there’s one stunning dress that really was inspiring (some of you would have heard me talking about it):

That’s Rachel McAdams in an Elie Saab gown.

I guess her breakout role came in Mean Girls. The Real McCoys seem trickier, but I hope for a happy ending like in the film. We’ll see how it goes.

Gossips and politics among the youths in school seem pretty common, and dated. It is perhaps nature’s way of preparing people for the ‘real’ adult world–or perpetuating meanness. If everyone was really all kind and cookies and cream, then life would be a bed of roses and Hobbes would be nothing but a stuffed toy Tiger. But there will always be some who are, like Hobbes said, “naturally selfish hedonists”.

That’s where the law comes in (though not fool-proof).

(Here’s Hobbes’s best friend, Calvin. But here’s an interesting article that you just have to read: http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/homepages/0913/0913text/calvin.htm)

Nothing diplomatic about this immunity

It’s unfair, but the law giving envoys immunity won’t change soon

By Andy Ho, in The Straits Times (ST) Mar 4, 2010

A RESIDENT at a local condominium who claimed that he was assaulted by a top Saudi Arabian diplomat on Jan 9 over a parking dispute filed charges this week ‘because I expect to be protected by the law’.

But the law is clear. A diplomat is immune from prosecution for all criminal acts. Singapore is a party to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Under it, a diplomat and members of his household may not be arrested or detained.

This case comes on the heels of another in which a Romanian diplomat was allegedly the driver of a car involved in two hit-and-run incidents last Dec 15, leaving one man dead and two others grievously injured. The diplomat left Singapore for home two days after the incidents, and has since made scurrilous attacks on the Singapore Government while refusing to come back to attend a coroner’s inquiry into the death.

In 1983, the grandson of the ambassador of Brazil to the United States shot a bouncer outside a nightclub. He got away scot free.

On April 17, 1984, gunmen from inside the Libyan Embassy in London sprayed machine gunfire on demonstrators gathered outside protesting against the Gaddafi regime. A policewoman was killed and 10 others were injured. No Libyan diplomat was ever brought to justice.

In January 1998, Alexander Kashin was hurt by the American consulate-general in Vladivostok in a car collision that left him paralysed from the neck down. Driving while inebriated, the US diplomat had jumped three red lights before the collision. The diplomat is still serving overseas.

Such international scofflaws show why absolute diplomatic immunity is unfair and undesirable. Many ask how it can even be justified.

For much of the 18th century, it was said that a diplomat lived effectively in his own state’s territory even while overseas. Thus, he could not be prosecuted by the receiving state. Yet, if a diplomat committed a crime in his own country, he would be prosecuted. This legal fiction was rejected by the League of Nations in the run-up to what eventually became the Vienna Convention.

It was also argued that the diplomat personified the sending state’s sovereign. Given the common law idea that ‘the King can do no wrong’, his personification couldn’t either. Even if this were not a legal fiction, almost all states today have their sovereignty resting in their people as represented by their elected governments. No one believes in the infallibility of any government.

At any rate, if the sovereign people themselves are not immune to prosecution while in a foreign land, then why should their representatives be so? Indeed, the coming into force of the Rome treaty to establish the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 shows that a global consensus now exists that the sovereign people and their governments alike can be held accountable for their crimes. If rulers, then why not their diplomats?

The rationale usually given nowadays is that diplomats cannot function properly without immunity. This notion of ‘functional necessity’, in fact, appears in the Preamble to the Convention.

Yet, if it were so, should it not cover official acts only? But then, who decides which acts are official?

Perhaps ‘functional necessity’ itself needs to be qualified. Technologies now enable national leaders to see and talk to one another personally, regardless of distance. This means that the diplomat – once the eyes and ears of his sovereign – is far less important now. If so, immunity should shrink accordingly.

The sending state could waive immunity but this almost never happens, so it does not deter diplomats from committing offences. Or the receiving state may expel the offending diplomat, which also has little deterrent value.

If there were a neutral international forum to prosecute errant diplomats and mete out punishment, the black sheep among them might be deterred. Experts have long proposed an international court to try errant diplomats but the costs of setting up and running such a specialised court are prohibitive.

But the ICC came into operation with jurisdiction over those crimes that national courts can’t, or don’t want to, investigate or prosecute; these include genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In principle, this permanent tribunal could prosecute any crime deemed unsuitable for a domestic court. Before the ICC was established, international drug trafficking was considered for inclusion, but it was agreed that the court’s limited resources would not allow for it.

Terrorist activities were considered too, but the parties could not agree on how to define them.

But there ought to be no definitional confusion over crimes like drink driving, assault, rape or homicide committed by a diplomat.

The ICC provides for 18 judges elected by two-thirds of member states and they each sit for only one nine-year term. This arrangement ensures that the court is not captured by any one state or ideology.

Some experts have suggested that the Rome treaty be amended to include the prosecution of diplomats, and the Vienna Convention be changed to give the ICC power over diplomats. This would give rise overnight to a neutral, fair and permanent forum in which to try diplomats.

But amending two treaties in tandem would call for an unimaginable amount of international goodwill. As such, this repugnant state of affairs, in which diplomats can commit crimes with impunity, will likely persist for a long time to come.

It is the law.

*

Relationships are always tricky. Human bonds are as complex as ionic or covalent bonds, what more bonds across nations. We all wish it’s as easy as James has it.

Standing up for good governance (extract)

Table talk with Kofi Annan

By Cheong Suk-Wai, in ST Mar 4, 2010

Q: Which crisis did you find hardest to deal with and why?

A: The Iraq crisis in 2003 was definitely one of the worst because of the way the coalition decided to go to war without Security Council approval… As secretary-general, you have to try to push and work with the member states to ensure that the right thing is done.

At the same time, you also have the responsibility to try and hold the organisation together and not to do anything that will add to the divisions.

Q: Could you have been more forceful about how wrong the war was?

A: Well, I needed to act in a manner that was not only responsible but also to a great degree effective. I know that, sometimes, people will say: ‘Why didn’t you stand on the rooftop and shout?’

Well, that was not the effective way. Your action has to make clear where you or the organisation stand on legal and moral principles, but not create a situation that compounds the difficulties.

*

At this interview in Singapore, Kofi Annan also talked about Africa and how the social climate there is changing with more youths becoming educated. He also hoped that university youths across Asia and Africa could better harness the friendship, enabling greater synergy and greater ties in the future.

We can only hope that youths of today–adults of the future–can make such a difference, the way Optimus Prime sees it. (I can’t help it but the intent of the film is so in-your-face; I just caught Transformers on Channel 5. I have been resisting watching this Michael Bay film because I’m such a purist, but after watching it, I think this political-comedy-action film is rather credible.)

Speaking of which, I managed to hunt down this elusive pair of cats: the white tiger and the black jaguar, after about seven days. The jaguar has also been the subject of much cloning. The ‘clones’ cost as little as S$30, but the real McCoy costs much more. Both cats are not officially on sale in Singapore, very likely due to some legal issues involving technology.

Nice job by Toshiba and Takara Tomy.

White tigers are indeed rarer than black jaguars (in this case too, as there are still a couple of jaguars left). Some wish the human society to be a zoo where life is simpler, conserved. Wild life is more brutal, and it is survival of the fittest. The concrete jungle is a mixture of the rule of jungle and the rule of law, which causes more discomfort when we negotiate an identity. Are we moral beings? Are we legal beings? Or are we animals running on instinct?

Big debate over China’s Little People theme park

Critics call it a zoo, staff see it as a haven

In ST Mar 6, 2010

KUNMING: Mr Chen Mingjing’s entrepreneurial instincts vaulted him from a peasant upbringing to undreamed-of wealth, acquired in ventures ranging from the production of electric meters to investments in real estate.

But when he turned 44, the allure of making money for money’s sake began to wane. He wanted to run a business that accomplished some good.

So last September, Mr Chen did what any socially aware entrepreneur might do: He opened a theme park of dwarfs, charging tourists about US$9 (S$12.60) a head to watch dozens of dwarfs in pink tutus perform a slapstick version of Swan Lake, among other skits.

Mr Chen has big plans for his Kingdom of the Little People. Imagine a US$115 million universe in miniature, set amid 5.26ha of rolling hills and peaceful lakes in southern China’s Yunnan province, with tiny dogs, tiny fruit trees, a 70m-high performance hall resembling the stump of a prehistoric tree and standard-sized guest cabins.

‘It will be like a fairy tale,’ Mr Chen said. ‘Everything here I have designed myself.’

Critics say displaying dwarfs is at best misguided and at worst immoral, a throwback to times when freak shows pandered to people’s morbid curiosity.

‘Are they just going there to look at curious objects?’ asked Mr Yu Haibo, who leads a volunteer organisation for the disabled in Jilin province.

Said Mr Gary Arnold, the spokesman for Little People of America, a dwarfism support group: ‘What is the difference between it and a zoo?’

But there is another view, and Mr Chen and some of his short-statured workers present it forcefully. One hundred permanently employed dwarfs, they contend, is better than 100 dwarfs scrounging for odd jobs.

They insist that the audiences who see the dwarfs sing, dance and perform comic routines leave impressed by their skills and courage. Many performers say they enjoy being part of a community where everyone shares the same challenges.

‘Before, when we were at home, we didn’t know anyone our size. When we hang out with normal-sized people, we cannot really do the same things,’ said Mr Wu Zhihong, 20. ‘So I really felt lonely sometimes.’

Mr Chen asserts he has won support from no less than the United Nations World Peace Foundation. He displays a certificate designating his company, Yunnan Jiucai Yundie Biotech, as the ‘Charity Base Camp’ for Kunming, the nearest city.

Supporters and critics agree on one point: The fact that the park is awash in job applications shows the disturbing dearth of opportunities for the disabled in China.

Ms Cao Yu, who is Mr Chen’s assistant, said she receives three or four job inquiries a week: ‘Under the current situation in China, they really will not be able to find a better employment situation.’

Mr Chen said his employees had gained self-respect and self-sufficiency.

‘It doesn’t really matter to me what other people say,’ he said. ‘The question is whether meeting me has changed their lives.’

NEW YORK TIMES

*

Maybe the youths of today will be able to change that  too? I don’t know. Sometimes we invest so much abstract hope on the next generation of leaders of mankind that it seems like cartoon infantile omnipotence.

Savages have always been present in the civil world and, like what some religious philosophies have it, they magnify the humane side of society, if they have not already consumed the entire society.

‘Thugs have taken over’ in quake-hit Chile

Looters out in force as govt struggles to maintain order, coordinate relief efforts

In ST Mar 4, 2010

CONCEPCION (CHILE): Thousands more troops were deployed across quake-ravaged Chile yesterday as armed vigilantes patrolled neighbourhoods to ward off looters while soldiers distributed emergency aid to desperate survivors.

With the country’s reputation for stability at stake, the authorities were scrambling to defuse an explosive situation in cities and towns, where gangs of looters roamed the streets days after one of the strongest earthquakes ever measured.

‘The thugs have taken over the city. Now we are not afraid of the earthquakes, we’re afraid of the criminals,’ Mr Marcelo Rivera, the mayor of Hualpen, told a local radio station.

President Michelle Bachelet, forced into defending government efforts to maintain order and coordinate rescue and relief operations, doubled the number of troops patrolling the worst-hit areas to 14,000, while an 18-hour curfew was imposed in Concepcion, where armoured military vehicles guarded strategic points of Chile’s hard-hit second biggest city.

On the road out of Concepcion, small groups of survivors waved pieces of cardboard on flimsy sticks that said: ‘We need food, we need water.’

Many Chileans have complained of a slow aid and security response from the government. ‘We are being attacked by a horde of people from another area,’ said Concepcion resident Patricia who called in to a local radio on Monday. ‘It’s not fair they are doing this. Please police, soldiers, whoever can help, come and help us.’

Chile has for many years been a shining example of orderliness and economic probity in Latin America, a region prone to instability, unrest and institutional crises.

It is among Latin America’s wealthiest countries on a per capita basis, and can claim to have its most stable economy thanks to prudent policies.

Chile’s far more rigorous building standards undoubtedly saved lives, but the government acknowledges that its response has been slow due to mangled roads and power cuts. It has condemned the burgeoning criminality, pledging to prosecute looters with the full force of the law.

Ms Bachelet, who hands over power to President-elect Sebastian Pinera on March 11, has struggled to coordinate an effective government response to the quake. Chile’s Navy, using erroneous data, had lifted a tsunami warning even as giant waves crashed into vulnerable coastal towns.

Ms Bachelet also declined to ask for foreign aid immediately after the quake, misjudging the extent of the damage.

‘How can the government say it does not need international help when it cannot even do the minimum job?’ said Ms Sandra Gonzalez, a 35-year-old resident of the badly hit central city of Talca, where looting also broke out.

Yesterday, the Singapore Government announced it will contribute US$50,000 (S$70,295) to purchase relief supplies requested by the Chilean government to help the quake-affected.

The contribution will be channelled through the Singapore Red Cross to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS

*

Yes. US$50000 is a lot of money. Considering I will be able to buy one-seventh of an HDB resale flat with that kind of money, which I don’t, so it seems like a lot of money to me. I haven’t been lucky with my application for the BTOs (Built To Order flats) and I feel like I had wasted S$30 so far on zero-chances, given the knowledge that demand for such flats outstrips supply. I’d rather spend $30 on the lottery, which I have never been acquainted with, than on paying the administrators for processing my applications, a job they are paid for already. I’d rather my government spend more money to fund national projects than international goodwill in such trying times.

I almost forgot what “public goods” means.

Public transport should cover remote areas too

In ST Feb 27, 2010

ON THE way home from my holiday in Bali, I read a report about secondary schools organising their own transport so students would not be late for school (‘Punctual students get a reward’, Feb 18).

Apparently, the public buses were too often overcrowded, and too many students could not make it to class on time in the morning.

I thought to myself: ‘So we farmers at the Kranji countryside are not the only ones who have to take matters into our own hands.’

Farmers in Kranji like my husband and I now bear the entire cost of ferrying their employees to work, because transport operators do not deem a bus service to the Kranji countryside necessary because it is not viable.

So if one is blind, deaf, dumb or otherwise challenged, but could actually be employed by farmers, one would be unable to get to work.

Transport is key to moving an economy. Ms Saw Phaik Hwa, chief executive officer of SMRT, said it herself in The Business Times a few weeks ago (‘Joint effort by one and all’, Feb 8).

It therefore amazes me that Singapore’s public transport system, so often toted as ‘excellent’, can have such gaping holes.

Ivy Singh-Lim (Mrs)
President
Kranji Farmers Association

*

The flamboyant Singh-Lim was the President of Asian Federation of Netball Associations before she retired and became a farmer, specifically the President of the Kranji Farmers Association. I don’t think she’s going to lead a Farmers Rebellion though.

Speaking of buses and students, I don’t think they are going to shift the boarding point for services 179 and 199 to the snazzy and cool air-conditioned interchange in Boon Lay. So NTU students would still have to be isolated and they will continue to board the buses from the old compound like they are a peculiar lot until future enhancements to the small area in the new compound have been made, which seems unlikely. I might be wrong because I am not trained in engineering and architecture, and I am only speculating. But I suspect the designers of the new interchange had never seen the incredible mass before they laid a brick.

They may just hire more bus drivers and acquire more buses, which may likely increase the price of the rides and everything will be easily justified and then forgotten.

There’s still time to prevent history from repeating (I think): the interchange in Clementi is still being built and hopefully NUS students get to enjoy the fruits of NTU students’ misery (well, maybe it isn’t that miserable: the old compound isn’t that bad. Have you ever smelt sweaty bodies in an air-conditioned space?)

Space is a luxury in Singapore and even churches say they need more space. This is logically true as one expands, but “where”, “how much” “commercialisation” are some of the many questions (Suntec?) This was subsequently questioned by many and one letter was printed on Mar 11, 2010 in ST. Do they have to pay a tax on such business ventures? What I found to be more of a revelation was what one ST-forumer posted (do note that it is difficult to verify the truth of the claims unless you have had similar experiences too):

goofyxxx1 (March 11, 2010 Thursday, 07:50 AM) on http://comment.straitstimes.com/showthread.php?t=31077

Come on. Churches are just big commercial organisations. They have audits and they have Charity Commissioners going after them for compliance. They have big time people in there managing it like hawks if not wolves in sheep clothings.

What is preached in churches whether in CH or NCC or FBCC or etc, the organisation administrative staff do not do the same. The staff can be very legalistic and follow the rules strictly so that there is no hanky punky.

For the glory of Christ, Churches have evolved from family orientated clubs to big concerns which are measured by how much “LOVE OFFERINGS” they receive every month and by the size of the congregation. However sadly in Singapore, whether small or big, you get a lot of these prideful and greedy people serving in the church and they are not the pastors or deacons or those appointed into the churches, you get those who think they serve their time in the churches, think that they are “ATAS” above every one who does not church.

In certain churches, especially the megas, those who tithe aplenty, are giving front roles and they are NOT even annointed people but greedy and self serving people. I have seen many in NCC where they [the big tithers] insisted on 3rd and 4th rows in the auditorium and they shun others even ministers [religious] who are seated beside them or those who are given seats when some big tithers are absent.

Frankly the above goes to show that churches need all these big tithers to survive and to pay for tax consultants and business consultants [even though the ministry of JESUS is supposed to be simple and humble] and that is why special preference is given to them to have front row seats. Even foreign visitors of other churches to the local church are given seats far away and this is perhaps not peculiar to NCC but it’s a style surely JESUS would not approve of, giving PLACES to people who pay big and not giving to people whose heart is JESUS but CHURCHES look at how much you tithe to see how much you love JESUS no matter what the pastors said about JESUS Loving the congregation because the church looks at the TITHE which can be in 100Ks.

If the PRESS is to go incognito to NCC Sunday first service, you will see the public members are given only ROW “E” onwards whereas C and D are for rich people mainly and the central seats and corners are reserved for rich visitors. The message is that though the church preaches JESUS, the organisation of a church practises different in this form and thus they are more business like and rest assured that to survive these churches need to comply with the government requirements and the “owners” and the big time ” businessmen ” who run these churches dont want it to fail because the churches provide people who may be interested in insurance products or interested in buying and selling houses and businessmen interact.

So rest assured, Churches are very professional in their approach even though they are not performing according to the JESUS approach where all can come in to the physical house of GOD.

*

A good thing about the Internet is that you can easily check the credibility of the sources; unlike print media which is bound by space, the Internet is virtual space you can tap on. Therefore, it is not a surprise that an ST report on Mar 10, 2010 did not finish citing the Health Minister’s analogy about wildebeests. It gave the impression that he encouraged people to sacrifice themselves to look after the aged in their family, at the expense of their own survival. Well, the extension on the blog by the Ministry of Health clarified that (http://mohsingapore.blogspot.com/2010/03/wildebeests-wild-beasts-beastly.html), and he “prayed for them even more deeply”.

Okay, great. It’s really true we’re gonna be so busted. I mean, it’s not rocket science. But it’s okay. I know people will be praying for me. In this capitalistic concrete jungle, we are yet again seeking an identity that is not ‘out of bound’: moral, legal, or beastly?

We all need money to survive in such a world before you can even pray for anything, it seems.