a tear for africa

I remember reading someone describing Africa as a "continent forsaken by God". It is not difficult to appreciate the validity of that epithet. But the hope of that hopeless continent really lies in the grace of Humanity, not figments of divinity.

I came across this video on one of my favourite blogs. While I never really cared much for Carrie Underwood (always felt her vocal quality subpar), I certainly can't say I feel the same disregard to the plight of the subjects of this video. This is sweet. It made me cry.

amazing wildlife video

Video shot at Kruger National Park in South Africa. Brutally dramatic, with a cast involving a herd of buffalo, a pride of lions and a pair of crocodiles. It speaks to the unpredictable vicissitudes of the savanna and the amazing tenacity of life.

kopi peng siew tai!

Hilarious! You should however, have at least a rudimentary knowledge of kopitiam Hokkien to appreciate this. The pant-peeing clincher comes toward the end...

sonofabitch

This is so funny!

gnothi seauton

“Know Thyself,”
urged the lapidary aphorism
inscribed above the portal
of the Apollinarian sanctuary at Delphi.

Minimalist maxim.
Epistemically esoteric.
(Or is it esoterically epistemic?)

Alas, the attainment of
true self-knowledge
seems as illusive as a Chimera,
Olympian in task,
Sisyphian in toil;

an odyssey of self-discovery
that must be navigated through
the Siren calls
of conformity and mediocrity;

a trudge through an eternal labyrinth,
paved by ideals and walled by realities,
in search of golden fleece
tangled up in a Gordian knot;

a contest between the
Muses and the Fates.

It is a quest,
embarked upon by champions
in search of the Pyrrhic spoils
of an interior battle,

spurred on by hope
but reined in by fear:

hope, that they might find
what they seek; fear,
that what they might find
be not what they sought.

(I hope all this doesn't sound Greek to you.)

words, in your presence

My heart lisps
and nerves stutter
when I am with you.

Words trip over themselves,
rush to pick themselves up,
and in their haste, stumble again.

Eloquence flees,
in the presence
of competing grace.

for kenjin

An abridged version of this article that I wrote will be published June 2007 in Camp Rainbow's 15th anniversary commemorative magazine. Kenjin's parents truly were an inspiration.

The popular Internet information website, Wikipedia, offers the following definition of histiocytosis: "Histiocytosis is a rare blood disease that is characterized by an excess of white blood cells called histiocytes. The histiocytes cluster together and can attack the skin, bones, lung, liver, spleen, gums, ears, eyes, and/or the central nervous system."

It is an academically thorough but somehow still inadequate definition of a vicious and incurable disease; words alone cannot truly convey its terrible reality. A picture on the other hand, according to the adage, is a thousand times more efficient.

18 year old Wong Ken Jin portrays such a picture. But a still-life one. Histiocytosis has infected his brain and robbed him of nearly all his motor abilities. His body lies in complete laxity and he spends most of his time in a motionless horizontality. Ken Jin lives in a perpendicular world, an alternate reality where form belies function, or lack thereof. He is lucid but has no means to coherently express himself. He can hear and see but cannot speak. He moans - his only tangible signal for attention. He is totally dependent.

But in spite of the impotence of his corporal shell, there is a twinkle in his eyes. It is a glimmer, that in its fragile innocence impels one to seek a hope beyond hope and find treasure in the most trivial of things. Ken Jin can still move his eyes, and from time to time, the corners of his lips curl ever so subtly, into an almost imperceptible expression of some momentary amusement or joy. Then there are the occasions of genuine bliss, like when he sees a favourite person he has missed for a while. The moans turn into delighted gurgles, his eyes brighten and frolic in excitement; an inner mirth struggling to burst from a deadened vessel determined to contain it. The vessel always succeeds. But only partially. His eyes speak. They laugh. They dance. They provide a window into the stark vitality of his restless soul.

In abject darkness, a light no matter how faint, becomes a beacon.

The picture that Ken Jin portrays is worth ten thousand words and more. Words that are unspoken but not unheard. Words enough to fill the pages of an entire book - a love story written not by Ken Jin himself, but by the people who have sacrificed much of their own lives for the sake of his. They are the heroes in his story. They are the people whom, when Ken Jin was still in possession of his faculties of speech, addressed as Daddy and Mummy. The last time those words kissed their ears was too many years ago.

Wong Siew Seng and Chan Kum Lin, both 50, are a genuinely warm and affable couple. Siew Seng is a manager in an American telecoms firm while Kum Lin works at a French MNC. Ken Jin is the eldest of three children - they have another teenage son and a little girl. There is no doubt that they are doting parents. But they put up a brave front when talking about their firstborn. It is an unexpected stoicism that disorientates and redefines one's preconceived notions of parental love and its conventional manifestations. But then again, the Wongs are anything but a conventional family.

Years of practice, close calls and heuristic intervention have taught them the limits of their son's physical integrity. Siew Seng and Kum Lin do not fuss over his fragility or seem vexed by his vulnerability. Even the recounting of the emotional roller coaster they've been on since Ken Jin's diagnosis at 19 months of age, takes on a decidedly phlegmatic register. But then it occurs that such is the nature of pain. A cautery cannot heal without also desensitizing.

But emotions can sometimes have a cruel tenacity. And every now and then a leak springs in their stolid veneer. And tears flow. It becomes obvious how they have vicariously assumed the lost hopes and dreams of their son. It becomes obvious how transcendental the depth of their love for Ken Jin is.

Both by choice and circumstance, their lives revolve completely around making life as meaningful for Ken Jin as possible. They spare no expense. The family take annual overseas vacations together. Typical Singaporeans, Australia is a recurring favourite. Accommodating Ken Jin's physical stamina for these trips is obviously no small feat. They go to all lengths to ensure that Ken Jin is able to participate in every single family activity. Siew Seng tells the story of how once, in Australia, on a hike through a dirt track, the wheelchair that Ken Jin was in broke down. He and the other men in the group - thankfully their extended family had joined them - spent the rest of day trudging through the woods, carrying Ken Jin in his wheelchair. Love knows no burden too heavy.

Their desire to ensure that Ken Jin leads a full life - as far as circumstances allow - persuaded them to sign him up for Camp Rainbow in 1998. He has been to a total of five camps in all. Each was as much an experience for him as it was for his parents. There were initial jitters of course; it would have been the first time in his life that Ken Jin would have spent an extended period of time away from his parents' supervision. Siew Seng and Kum Lin were rightfully concerned whether the camp volunteers, most of them young adults, would have the capacity to adequately shoulder the demands of caring for Ken Jin. But as they soon found out, their worries were unfounded.

Years after his final experience with Camp Rainbow, Siew Seng and Kum Lin still speak fondly of the volunteers who took care of their son during the three-day camps. Their eyes brighten as they recall their names and faces as though it was just yesterday. The gratitude and admiration they have for these young men and women who made all the difference in the world for Ken Jin is obvious. They speak glowingly of the sacrifice and dedication each volunteer had for Ken Jin. They also remain impressed by the exacting and efficient manner in which the camps were organized and run. It is a telling tribute that to this day, many of those volunteers have become close family friends.

They still keep in touch and visit Ken Jin from time to time. They are the ones who turn Ken Jin's moans into gurgles of joy and cause his eyes to dance. It is then that for a brief moment, Ken Jin steps out of his perpendicular world and reaches out to embrace ours.

encore presentation

A couple of days ago, I received a very unexpected message from an ex-army buddy who's still serving his time. His superior, a Major, requested an article I had written on a rather high-profile military function I had the privilege of emceeing for. This was about a year back. Apparently, he wants to use it as a presentational component for an impending Division workplan function. My hunch is that it's going to be one of those morale-inflating puff-pieces that attempts to portray the unique experience of a single individual as representative and typical of the masses.

I do not deny that I had had a positive NS experience, for the most part. I met many people whom I admired for many different reasons. Eventhough most of these people were superiors who outranked me by leagues, there was always a reciprocation of mutual goodwill and respect when we had reason to collaborate. I recall fondly and with much gratitude, how one one occasion, a very senior officer who had a reputation for being extremely punctilious when it came to the separation of ranks, actually drove me all the way home from an event which I was participating in. Bear in mind that I was a mere Spec' then. (Oh, the pun just struck me: a mere "speck". Get it? Haha. I'm so clever.) So yes, I had a very amicable working relationship with my superiors.

Whatever one might think of the idiosyncrecies of the SAF - and yes, just like any large organization that has an imposing heirarchy, it has many - one cannot deny the fact that it is extremely efficient and capable, where and when it counts. There are of course areas that are still mired in bureaucracy and intransigent mindsets. And yes, the great weakness (some might argue, great strength) of the SAF is to indulge in theatrics in order to impress. But efficacy must be evaluated according to its manifest fidelity to, and achievement of organizational objective. In other words, has the SAF been faithful to its objective and has it managed to live up to it? By all accounts, it has. The evidence of this is the country's regional geopolitical autonomy, security clout and a thriving foreign investor-driven economy.

So anyway, the point being that while the SAF is by no means a perfectly managed organization, it's got a creditable track record.

I think I kinda rambled on this one. I initially wanted to do a short introduction to the article that they wanted and then reproduce it here. But the (figurative) pen is a fickle conductor on the train of thought.

And so without further ado, I present to you the encore of...

The Men Did Not Move
(Originally published July 2006)
An abridged version was published in the August 2006 issue of Army News

What does it say when an accident turns out to be the brightest spot in an event? It could mean that the event was a trial in mediocrity that was kindly vindicated by Murphy's Law, or it could be as an imperfection in a masterfully-crafted work of art that gives it its value in uniqueness. The SAF Day Parade 2006 was the latter.

It happened toward the end of the ceremony, as the parade commander was preparing to order the contingents off for the march-past. Facing the dignified assembly of spectators, with his back to his parade, he bellowed the order for the Colours (flags representing the various formations) to be raised, as he had done so countless times during the rehearsals over the past month. But nothing happened. The men did not move. It took him approximately three seconds to realise his error, that they were not in the correct posture for that command to be given: they were in the "at ease" position instead of the prerequisite "at attention" for them to properly execute the order. Recovering from initial uncertainty and with a remarkably confident "Semula!" (an appended nullifying command) which overtook the few seconds of doubt, he then went on to call his men to attention and reissued his order for the Colours to be raised.

Now this could have turned out to be an international embarrassment in front of the gamut of dignitaries, local and foreign, invited to watch the SAF showcase the regimental skill and discipline of its finest. But that was not to be. Instead, that gaff turned out to be a shining moment, showcasing exactly and exactingly the regimental skill and discipline of the SAF's finest for that one reason: the men did not move.

Those of us who have participated in our fair share of parades know that when a wrong command is given, it is inevitable that the less alert amongst the contingents' members would react to it by attempting to excute it even when they are in an inapproriate posture to do so (it does not help that the commands are given in Malay to a predominently Chinese demographic). In doing this, their sudden movements, which quickly become confused and awkward abortions as they realise no one else moved, are like highly visible fractures in the integrity of the contingents' stolid constitution. It is a given, even amongst the most seasoned parade sergeant majors (the men who orchestrate the parade rehearsals, traditionally known as the "Kings of the Parade Square") that some men, somewhere would perpetrate this; eventhough it would not be entirely their fault, as they were ironically, just following orders. That is how most parades are ruined.

But not the one held on the First of July, 2006. The men did not move. Of the thousand men on the parade square, not a twitch was observed when the wrong orders came. One thousand bodies that shared a singular impregnable mind. It would not have been inappropriate if the applause that had accompanied every sharply executed drill throughout the parade had also rung out in the seconds after that defining command. The silence and stillness that enveloped the square in what could have been cynically interpreted as a disobedience of orders spoke volumes about the alertness and mental fortitude of each individual soldier who represented the SAF on the parade square that day (as the Regimental Sergeant Major of the SAF later remarked, they were truly "thinking soldiers"). Beyond that, it spoke volumes about the effort and conscientiousness the men had put into the countless sapping rehearsals that marked the month before. It spoke volumes about the quality and ethic of the SAF.

It was also volume that marked the recitation of the SAF Pledge and the singing of the National Anthem moments before. The concluding line of the pledge where the men swore to protect the independence of the nation "with our lives!" was shouted with such frightening conviction that the shivers that went up my spine emerged as an emotional lump in my throat. And the anthem that had been sung into numbness at every single rehearsal suddenly came alive again, reanimated by the unrehearsed emotion of the moment.

It is necessary here to record that despite the mistake, the parade commander had been an inspiration for me and my colleagues by the absolute professionalism, conscientiousness and astuteness he displayed during the rehearsals every step of the way. And in fairness, the parade format that he had confidently mastered had to be abridged at the last minute because the President had taken ill and could not attend. Nerves get the better of even the best. Even then, history will associated him not with his oversight but with the greater good that came of it.

All told, it was a humbling and moving experience to have been part of this. Come the tenth day of August this year, I will look back on this day and think that the two years that led to this was worth it. Because while the men did not move, I, and many others were.

- end -

the word of the day

... is Petulant.

capricious bitch

Time
is what a writer spends,
to bribe his Muse.

Sometimes she feels generous
and requests only a token.

Other times she craves attention
and throws herself at him,
unsolicited.
That's always welcomed.

But too often,
she demands more
than what he can afford.
Then, all the time in the world
is insufficient to coax her.

Capricious bitch, that Muse.

wit

This was too good not to blog about!

Apropos of the subject of my previous post, I caught the following interview taking place between Anderson Cooper and his guest, Christpher Hitchens. Hitchens' reply to Cooper's question was entirely spontaneous.

Background Info: Anderson Cooper is a CNN journalist who hosts his own programme. Christopher Hitchens is an atheist and author of the book "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything".

Transcript

AC: Christopher, I'm not sure if you believe in heaven, but if you do, do you think Jerry Falwell would be in it?

CH: No, and I think it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to.

LOL!

Here's the rest of that piece (unfortunately sans the above-transcribed portion):

falwell

Jerry Falwell is dead. When I saw the news on CNN, I didn't initially understand why that was important to me. But it felt important. It was not because of his protracted obituary coverage, which the networks accord only to famous people. I mean, sure, he was well known, and as a follower of American politics, I knew who he was, his brand of morality and politics and the degree of his influence over issues of import to American society. But as a non-American, his actions never directly affected my life in any appreciable way. The epicentre of his influence really emanated from heartland USA and for all intents and purposes, the scope and scale of his ministry revolved exclusively around American life and politics.

So why should this one man's passing, literally a thousand miles away, affect me? Because some things transcend geography; they creep between the faultlines of the human heart. And he was a personification of those things.

Prejudice, bigotry and hate. Insidious cancers that cultivate in the black agar of religion.

Jerry Falwell is dead. He was everything I think I almost became, but thankfully never will.

Like Julius Caesar, his final breath lingers. Vitriol. A curse upon generations.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the subject of this article, you can read his biography here.)

the road not taken

There are two opposing interpretations of the didactic thrust of this famous poem by Robert Frost. The first proposes that the road that the author took was indeed the correct one and he was the better for it. Proponents of this interpretation see it as analogous to idioms such as "bucking the trend" and "going against the grain" where being different sets you up in advantage over the rest of the herd. The other view suggests that the author was in fact lamenting that he took the wrong route - the one less travelled. Why else would he have sighed at the beginning of the fourth stanza? The title of the poem also seems to reflect a dwelling tinge of rue. I'm personally leaning toward the latter interpretation. But as that repository of all human knowledge since the origin of time points out, there are different shades to its probable intended meaning.

What's your take on it?

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost (1916)

And here's a clip of British thespian Alan Bates reciting the poem in a commercial directed by legendary advertising guru Neil French, for UBS. Lovely delivery.

pluvial musings

I had a fitful sleep last night. The lullabic rhythm of the midnight rain that played outside really should have had a soporific effect, if not for my circadian rhythm having been reset that afternoon by a retrospectively unwise submission to mid-day somnolence.

So laying in my bed, with nothing to do I began thinking: Why exactly does rain induce sleep? Conventional wisdom might attribute its effect solely to its audible rhythmic quality. The predictable incessancy of the sound of droplets hitting myriad surfaces interrupts the dull stillness of the night and alleviates the restlessness of the mind. Contrary to popular belief, a still mind is not really a mind at rest; studies have suggested that "dream sleep" is actually more efficacious at rejuvenating the brain than "non-dream sleep". I think the same applies to our pre-sleep physiology as well. A mind that has something soothing to focus on, is a mind that is more likely to go into a comfort zone conducive for sleep than a mind that has nothing to process, and consequently becomes restless and delays sleep. But the audible qualities of rain, I think, is only a partial explanation.

The other reason is security. Being tucked up in a warm bed with the cold rain beating down outside makes us feel safe. It is an illustration of how we appreciate something only because of its antithetical analogue (I'm sure there is a proper philosophical term for this theory, but it eludes me at the moment). For example, we value light only because we have experienced darkness; we know what "softness" is only because we have also perceived "hardness"; peace is treasured only because we understand the consequences of war, etc.

It is the same with our sense of security during the rain. The warmth and dryness of our beds is contrasted with the cold wetness of the outside rain. Our perceived safety is made more tangible precisely because of a manifest threat that we know can't get us. In fact, the greater the torrent, the safer we feel in our beds. And obviously, the safer we feel, the more conducive it is to go to sleep.

So yeah, that's my take on why the rain makes us sleepy. I know - I'm such a nerd. Anyway, I hope the heavens decide to present an encore tonight...

what's good writing?

Good writing, I contend, is not stylistic. Truly good writing employs substance over style. A proficiency in language alone does not a good writer make. It is a concinnity of intellect and emotion that animate the inanimate. Words are merely academic without the ideas that inform them and emotions that choreograph their literary dance. There is always the idea behind the idiom.

This poem by Polish Nobel laureate, Wisława Szymborska, is a case in point. It was written in Polish, but none of the elegance of its idea is lost in translation. Ideas transcend language. They speak the universal tongue that is the human experience.

The Joy Of Writing

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence - this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word "woods."

Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they'll never let her get away.

Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.

They forget that what's here isn't life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop.

Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?

The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.

- Wisława Szymborska

oh, btw...

...I decided to start a new blog (this one) because the old one at joelosophy.blogspot.com was beginning to act up. I have no idea what's wrong. It refuses to allow me to edit or delete my posts. But because I still like quite a few of the posts there I'm leaving it up pro tempore until I decide whether to migrate them over to this one. But this shall be my primary blog henceforth. I'm trying to be a lot more diligent with this one than I was with the old one.

(Forgive me if the previous post sounded a little self-indulgent. But then again, it's a blog. If you can't be self-indulgent in your own blog, where can you be? Heh.)

a rose by any other name

I was never really particular about how my name was pronounced until I went to work at RSI. Radio people are pedants when it comes to pronunciation. And rightfully so. The spoken word isn't the same as the written one. Semantics aside, the latter is a two dimensional visual construct whose meaning is apparent in itself. It doesn't matter what font a word is rendered in or on what kind of paper it is printed on. The same word conveys the same meaning in whatever form.

The spoken word however, is a rather different creature. The meaning it conveys is not apparent in itself. It is subject to factors not applicable to its ink-and-pulp cousin. Factors such as intonation, cadence, inflection and of course, pronunciation. Just as how clothes maketh the man, these are the aural apparel we dress our words in which determine how they are percieved and interpreted by our listeners. The same word spoken differently can convey different values and conjure different contexts. That is something every radio presenter - well, the good ones at least - learns early on.

So it was a pleasant surprise at RSI, when so many people actually knew to pronounce my name correctly. It was nice but didn't really strike me as a big deal at first. Like I said, I was never really particular about how my name was pronounced. When you grow up with even your family and close friends mispronouncing your name, the error becomes normalized through sheer frequency and accommodated as an accepted alternative. So growing up, I never took issue with the mispronunciation of my name. If anything, it sometimes felt weird when on the rare occasion, someone actually did get my name right.

But like I said, in radio, you cultivate a ear for nuances in speech and begin to appreciate the intangible qualities of the spoken word. You become sensitive not just to words, but to sounds - how certain words just "sound" more pleasing than others. You realize that your reaction to a word - the picture it paints in your mind or the emotion it evokes - does not depend so much on its inherent meaning as it does on how it is spoken - how it "sounds". It really has nothing to do with the intellectual process; rather, it is more of a primal, instinctive reaction. Remove words from the equation and the point is elucidated. Compare heavy metal with classical music and contrast their expected emotional and mental effects on the listener. So how a word sounds is vital to how it is perceived.

Which brings me back to the two versions of my pronounced name. The pronunciation of the first syllable is rather perfunctory. The crux of the problem lies really in the last two letters of my name that form the second syllable. The first version - the incorrect one - vocalizes the syllable according to its literal phonetic spelling. The second - the correct version - interprets its pronunciation according to more conventional Anglicized norms. I guess it could be argued that given its Semitic roots, it is the first version that stays truer to its cultural origins. But the fact is that the vast majority of the words in the English language are xenographically Anglicized terms. And when they become subsumed into another language, these words assimilate the pronunciation norms of that language as well. It is no different with names.

So with this cultivated sensitivity, I became more aware of my own instinctive reaction to how my name was pronounced. The improper version began to feel colloquial and gauche. The proper one, more sophisticated, more "natural"; you notice how much easier it rolls off the tongue - how, instead of two disjointed syllables as in the first version, it almost becomes a single syllable with a subtle deviation at the end. More... atas, you know?

Hence, I have decided that after 23 years of being indifferent to how my name was said, I really like the proper version better. It is not "Jo-el" or "Jo-well" or "Jewel" or "Henry".

It is "Jouhl". Say it out loud now. :)