Fat Fingers

There is an interesting trend going around today, and I have a name for it. Instancy. "I want it, and I want it now.

The bad habit of impatience has been exacerbated many-fold by the advent of  Do It With James and other similar bank schemes. It is the world’s way of making more and more money out of those who haven’t got any to begin with. Sure, I love James, but only if he’s my husband, son, or boyfriend. But a loan? I love loans? I find that feeling extremely difficult to identify with.

Walk into many a young couple’s home today and you will find many similarities to homes owned by those who have arrived in industry. Plasma screens (wrong aspect ratio for TV signals), Bose sound systems (grossly overrated), Sub Zero fridge, Blum furniture fittings, one child.

In all likelihood, these artifacts are not fully paid for, with nothing to back them up. Even more galling is the SUV in the car park, also on hire-purchase. The facts that decorations outweigh descendants and omnipotent vehicles rank higher on the priority scale than offspring are very telling on society’s train of thought today. A train very soon to be derailed as the reality of hollow luxury comes crashing down upon a flimsy facade with nothing to back it during crises.

Travelling from West to East today, I spent more than three hours in various buses (while stopping along the way. I also managed to read most of my 201 material, but that is another Detenber Digression).

I noticed that the buses were mostly stationary, along with all the other cars on the road. This led me to wonder just what was so liberating about driving, and then on to why does everyone want to drive a car that cannot move amidst the hundreds of other cars?

There are really only two times in the day that driving is truly useful, ie. it gets you from point A to B quickly, without having to wait for everyone else to get there first - in the wee hours of the morning and in the middle of the day. The former occurs when most people are asleep and by extension, unable to drive; the latter happens because most people are gainfully cooped up in their cubicles and therefore unable to drive.

If you were gainfully employed, you would not be driving around in the middle of the day. Again, if you were employed in the daytime, you ought to be sleeping at night and therefore unable to drive.

Therefore, the only time when most people are free to drive would be, well, when most other people are free to drive, thus creating an enormous swarm of vehicles on the road at the same time, all unable to move.

I do not know if drivers are turly happy, because I cannot see them clearly behind their glass screens, impassively staring at the boot of the car in front of them. But I do know that I find nothing liberating, exhilarating, or ego-boosting about waiting in line behind hundreds of other cars to pass a junction, hearing the card reader go "teep!" as I pass under the gantry, searching for a parking lot alongside tens of other cars circling the parking area like vultures and then having to pay to park, and finally, not being able to put on my tie, tie my shoelaces, and read my papers sitting in the back seat while someone else negotiates the traffic.

In other words, driving is fun, sure, if you take the car to Gudang. Or Arnage. Or Antarctica. I can even understand why everyone is all excited about getting their driving license. Hell, I’m excited for myself too, ten years from now. But what I cannot empathise with is the desire to buy a car. More accurately, to buy a car without any money.

There really ought not to be so many thousands of cars on the roads today but for the fact that one can buy a vehicle with almost nothing in the bank. If you have worked ten years and saved up enough money, you could honestly buy a car and heave a sigh of relief as you stop taking the bus. Fair enough if your first job earns you fifty thousand a year. However, many of those driving new cars today are fresh out of school without fifty thousand a year.

In other words, many of those cars on the roads today ought not to be there at all but for those execrable car loans. In fact, if you buy a new car and don’t take up the loan, you will end up paying more for your car. In other words, you are coerced into taking a loan.

Buy what you cannot afford. Spend what you do not have. Enjoy what you have not earned. Are these false values condoned? By whom?

A friend called this morning and asked if I wanted to do a round-island cycle in the evening. With the Zip all ready to go, and my ego needing a boost, I decided that we should make the trip. "One more milestone under the belt" I thought.

At ten-fifty pm, my friend announced that he could wait no longer, so I told him to start first. I would have to complete the trip alone. He went north to Mandai, then westward through Kranji, down Neo Tiew, and came home via the West Coast.

I decided to skip the Thomson hills which would wear my lazy legs out too early in the trip, and went east instead. I did a comfortable 28km/h average all the way down Balestier - Lavender - Kallang - Mountbatten - Fort - ECP. When I got to the seaside, I was still doing a healthy 27-28 along the cycling track. There were very few people around, mostly couples and a few bladers.

The major nuisance at this point was the number of speed bumps along the cycling path. There must have been at least thirty of them, and they were all convex, which meant that it jarred my front wheel as it hit the bump and made the ride very uncomfortable. I did not want to slow down, but neither did I want to ruin my bicycle, so I resorted to standing up before every bump and doing the old rock back and forth thing, which must have looked really silly to the pubbers watching me go by.

I exited the ECP with an average speed of 27.4 and entered Changi Coastal Road just after midnight. There is nothing quite like the roar of the 747s engines as it rises in pitch and climaxes with a hair-raising shriek just before the pilot eases off the brakes and unleashes the giant to let it thunder down the runway.

I passed the SAF Ferry Terminal, entered Telok Paku and that was where the flat roads ended. Down Loyang Avenue, into Pasir Ris, passed right through the sleeping town and into Tampines Avenue 7.

At this point, I slowed down and wondered where to go next. I wanted to keep as close to the coast as possible, but I didn’t know the roads on the East Side very well. On hindsight, I should have stayed within Pasir Ris and exited Elias Road to enter Tampines Road. But of course, I didn’t know that. Also, to my chagrin, my legs were feeling really tired. I could not believe it. I overestimated myself by thinking that a 200km ride would be a walk in the park. "Just keep going", I told myself at the start, but I hadn’t reckoned on my legs giving out. At this point, my speed dropped below 25km/h and I started to question the soundness of completing the 150km trip.

I turned from Tampines Avenue 7 into Avenue 9, then Avenue 10, all in an effort to head North toward the sea. I entered Industrial Avenue 5 and exited into old Tampines Road which took me past Paya Lebar Air Base. At this point, I was completely alone. The old trees obscured the street lights and a mist was drifting slowly across the road. I felt my hair standing. The night air was very cold and smelt like fresh mud.

I could see the TPE to my right, but did not want to venture across it. Now I know that Pasir Ris lies to the right of the TPE, which was where I should have gone. Had I done that, I would have crossed the Sungei Serangoon into Sengkang and kept closer to the coastline, coming down Punggol Road. But of course, I didn’t know that.

I crossed Defu Avenue 1, turned right into Hougang Avenue 3, and turned right into Avenue 8, again trying to keep as far north as possible. I stopped outside a 7-Eleven and bought a bottle of 100 Plus and a Milo bar. As I was eating, a middle aged man came up to me and we started chatting about cycling. He was an avid cyclist in the seventies, and rode a steel frame which he called a "Lady". I am still wondering what a Lady is. Perhaps he meant Raleigh, which was a top-end frame that every half-decent cyclist would have ridden back then.

I turned left into Avenue 4, then into Avenue 9, and then into Yio Chu Kang Road. By this time, my legs were killing me, and I was no longer concerned with keeping near the sea, but rather on heading west as soon as I could and probably home.

Yio Chu Kang Road proved to be a rather hilly affair and I climbed most of the inclines in my smallest gear, coasting down the other side. The road was so old and quiet that I started to imagine what it would have been like a hundred years ago, with the dirt tracks and villages. Again, my skin started to crawl.

I passed under the Central Expressway and the Seletar Farmways on the right. There also lay the huge, sprawling complex of Seletar Camp, with its myriad roads and Colonial bungalows. Lentor Avenue came up, and I gave it not more than a glance. Going right would have taken me into Yishun - Sembawang - Causeway, which would have been the northernmost point of my trip, but my legs were far too dead for me to even contemplate doing so.

At the end of Yio Chu Kang Road, I turned into Old Upper Thomson Road which followed the contours of Lower Peirce Reservoir. At the end of the old road, I crossed Upper Thomson Road and entered Bishan Park, crossed Marymount Road, entered Bishan Park, crossed Bishan Road, followed the Kallang River, crossed Braddell Road, entered Potong Pasir briefly, and was home.

By this time, my legs had actually settled down into a steady rhythm and I found that I could ride at about 26km/h quite happily, but heck, I was already home. Another time perhaps.

The total distance clocked was 72.18km, with an average speed of 24.2km/h. Not a exactly a slow coach, but nowhere near what this self-proclaimed so-called experienced cyclist should be doing. How humbling.

So at this point I’ve got pretty much all that I’ve wanted for my bicycles.

Campy Record? I’ve got the hubs.
Dura Ace? I’ve got the whole gruppo.
XTR? I’ve got them from nine hundred to nine-five-two. And both five-arm cranksets no less.

Three months ago a friend mentioned the classic pearl white Sante crankset, apparently quite rare. Three nights ago I bought a bicycle with it. It’s a rather numb feeling when I’m finally holding in my hands the very thing that I might have pursued for months. The chase is over; the fun has ended. Owning the item isn’t quite as exciting as trying to get it.

I’ve got six frames and almost twenty wheels; lugged, TIG-welded, steel, titanium. My room really looks like a shop now. The question is: Where do I go from here? What else is there for me to get that I haven’t already got?

A 1964 Rene Herse mixte? A Toei? A Mercian?

Let’s wait and see.

If there is one thing I have a big problem with, it is that of a person not speaking his mind.

Too many people keep secrets; too many faces are facades. You never know what another person is really thinking or feeling; You never know if what you see is what you get.

This breeds plenty of ill feelings, especially when the truth is eventually made known.

From a multitude of conversations with a multitude of people over many years, I have come to realise (and I am sure everyone else too) that a great deal of people do not like a great deal of other people.

Yet when I go to lunches and dinners and meetings and cocktails and weddings and family sitdowns, I see plenty of happy facades. Bullshit.

This should not be the case. People who have issues with one another should talk it out, face-to-face. No intermediaries, no letters, no e-mails, no messages.

SMS as a form of communication is by far the worst way to solve personal problems. Parties have the option of hanging an issue by not replying a message. The sender never knows what is really going on, and the issue at hand never gets resolved.

In my opinion, there is no room to be wishy-washy in interpersonal communication. You always say what is on your mind, you are always open and honest, and you do not hide your thoughts and feelings from the party you are communicating with.

It is precisely the act of deliberately withholding and concealing information, or the lack of drive to address and close an issue that creates suspicion and uncertainty.

I do not like suspicion or uncertainty. I do not want to make time to mindread and decipher hints and clues. I like an overt, frank, and direct communication of ideas and intentions.

Perhaps I do not live up to my own expectations of other people’s methods of communication, but I am sure as hell working on it.

There is a new catch phrase in town. It’s "strong mandate".

In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about, "strong mandate" is an arbitrary point on the popularity rating scale. This has now been defined as 66.6 percent.

By this definition, anything that reaches 66.6 percent or more, is good by Singaporean standards. It’s a mark to be proud of - a sign of a capable student, a popular trend, or a competent government.

Our new grade scale now looks like this (with a revision suggested by Tinky):

A+ and A is an absolute mandate (80%)
B+ and B is an overwhelming mandate (70%)
C+ is a just a strong mandate (66.6%)
C is an average mandate (60%)
D is a poor mandate (50%)

Of course, absolute should really be 100%, but who gets full-marks for anything?

From the looks of this, I’m doing pretty well in school!

I walked to the bus stop last night and was blocked by the exiting members of the PAP rally. There is was, stuck because Chok Tong and Boon Yang and the guys were walking to their cars. I had no choice but to wait, surrounded by crowds of supporters who were cheering "PAP! PAP! PAP!".

I would have been excited, but for the fact that I was in a hurry to get back to school, on a Tuesday night at ten, carrying a bag that weighed about eight kilos and very irritated from reading a textbook about marketing.

I ended up snapping at my friend on the phone and also missing my express bus, which cost me a half hour wait (testament to the lousy bus service). To me, a good bus service is always freshly air-conditioned, smell-free, teenage-chatter-free, drives very fast, and arrives every four minutes.

I arrived in my room the find the water heater still leaking, sink still choked, and the lights blown. Beautiful.

Internet connection, slow as always. I connect to more than four sites and the MSN goes down. If you want to stay in NTU, drive your own car and susbcribe to SingNet broadband for your room. Bring your own portable air-conditioner and fridge, and bring your own washing machine too.

The shittle, sorry, shuttle buses here run an average of five times less frequently than the SBS services, drive at about two-thirds the speed, and carry half the passengers. I don’t know why we are paying for it at all, or that the school is desperate enough to subscribe to this shuttle bus company.

I don’t know why the administration can get away with supplying hall residents with dial-up speed connections, especially when deadlines are always looming and thousands of students need to download billions of bytes.

I don’t understand how residents can put up with machines that leave layers of lint on the washed clothes, and washing cycles that take more than an hour to complete.

In short, I don’t see how this jungle can live up to the world class image that it is trying to portray. It is only world class in its absolute rurality, and the fact that you can be buried in the next door cemeterial complex if you get killed by a stray mortar bomb from the live firing area, also next door.

Allow me to propose my thesis - there is something called love.

Let me explain: I define love as an unconditional act. When I "love" someone, I go out of my way to do something for that person without expectations. That means, without expecting a reward in terms of money, favours, sex, whatever.

Another condition to prove love is that whatever you do for the other person must be inconvenient for you. It’s very easy if you buy something for someone with your spare change. You did not make any sacrifice. Anyone with the means to satisfy another person can claim it to be an act of "love".

Love is really a sacrifice. Love is when you give up something you have or want for somebody else’s sake, even though you feel the pinch. It can be your television programme, your hobby, your lifestyle, your career, even your life.

You can love both men and women (let us not talk about animals or objects or ideas) - there are no boundaries to love.

In a world that has become systematically pragmatic, it is very difficult to find examples of love. Why should I do something for you when you don’t do anything for me? Today, we think first of ourselves, then of others. This will have very dire consequences for society. Humans who do not look out for each other cannot weather crises.

There are many implications of not loving. Do you not consider the person behind you on the escalator, waiting to move while you hold hands with your partner? Do you not consider the driver waiting at the lights while you saunter across the road on a green man? Do you think that public transport may be better for the earth, or do you buy a car anyway for your own convenience?

Love is about the other at the expense of the self. It has nothing to do with romance, friendship, companionship, or barter. It is not about win-win situations. It is really about making the world a better place, a more human place - if that is what human means - to live in.

Of course we could say, "that’s not how our businesses were built, that’s not how our nation was founded." But of course, I am ever idealistic, and of course, there is always this thing called love.

Every time I walk past the new Supreme Court, I stare aghast at the garish patterns on the glass-panelled stone walls, and marvel at the idea of having a pseudo-modern building which in typical tasteless Singaporean fashion, is a motley collection of ideas that once put together, scream "Obiang".

Why on earth could they not have designed a court to look like a court - stately, majestic, solid and timeless?

One only has to look at the new Parliament House to see that even though it is a modern building, it retains the essence of decorum found in Colonial architecture, albeit in less elaborate form.

The Supreme Court, on the other hand, is a nightmare to behold. Perhaps justice is indeed found in the unlikeliest of places?

Have you ever wondered about how different religions are perceived?

Notice, how when we think of Muslims, we think - no pork. When we think of Catholics, we think - no condoms, no meat on Fridays. We think of Buddhists and we think - must respect life and vegetarian. Hindu - no beef.

Why is it that in a country where racial and religious harmony is promoted, we are still thinking in terms of the rules that differentiate us? And how strangely those bound by no religions look at us when we seem to be living life bound by rules that make little sense to those who are ‘liberated’?

Are we really suffering; is religion really a burden to life?

I don’t think so. Religion is a way of life. It is a whole experience, a discipline, a lifestyle, a testimony to those who have gone before us (marked with the sign of faith).

Unlike the traditions of old, when children were born into a practice and lived it without question, Generation Y is now able to choose their religion - discarding the difficult ones and picking the convenient ones, those that tell them what they want to hear, without limitations, without imposing guilt, with no strings attached.

Oh, you’re Muslim, cannot eat pork right (but I can and I know you drink alcohol in the pubs).

Oh, you’re Catholic, cannot use condoms right (but I can use them as much as I darn well please and you can either lie that you don’t, abstain from sex, or have twenty kids like your grandfather did).

Intercultural and inter-religious studies are a must for every student today, if we are to foster a truly multi-ethnic society in Singapore. There is no doubt that downplaying differences and education-by-segmentation has adversely affected societal perceptions of each race. We need to openly discuss and debate cross-cultural traditions and beliefs. Students of a First-World nation, today, are mature for such a curriculum.

The question now - is the State ready?