Civil Society 1, Government 0

Yesterday, this turned up in my NUSmail inbox:

Towards a Caring, Dignified and Professional Working Environment: Foreign
Domestic Workers in Singapore

Panelists:
- Dr Noorashikin Abdul Rahman, Fellow at Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
(ISEAS)
- Mr Ho Siong Hin, Divisional Director of Ministry of Manpower
- Miss Braema Mathi, Chairman of Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2)
- Mrs Bridget Lew, Director of Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics
(HOME)
- Mr Chew Kim Whatt, author of Foreign Maids: the complete handbook for
employers and maid agencies

Why are Foreign Domestic Workers excluded from the Employment Act?

What are the legislation in place to regulate their wages?

What are the organizations that Foreign Domestic workers can seek help from?

As Singapore plugs herself into the capitalistic node of global forces, foreign talents remain an important resource in our economic persuasions. What is usually ignored or forgotten by society, is the 150, 000 foreign domestic workers (FDWs) that work silently in the domestic household. Indeed, for every sensationalized report of abuse in the media, there are many more "quiet indignities" behind the closed doors of our households.

Why it should concern you?

In conjunction with USP and Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), a group of students is organizing a forum to raise awareness amongst the NUS community in the political, economic and social climate of Singapore that surround the wage issues of the FDW.

If you want to know more about the legislation, policies and institutions that are in place to protect migrant workers in Singapore, and have a better understanding of civil society at large, we hope to see you at our forum.

And today, I receive this:

Dear students, faculty and staff

Please kindly note the
following updates with regards to the forum on foreign domestic workers in
Singapore:

(1) The venue will now be the xxxxxx.
(2) The panelist from Ministry of Manpower has withdrawn from the forum.
(3) If you wish to attend this forum, please do confirm your attendance with xxxxxx.

Thank you very much.

Music Bulletin #2

Just a little update on the bands I'll be catching when I hop over to the Big Apple for two weeks in May:

1. Kasabian (with Mad Action and Rock n' Roll Soldiers) at the Bowery Ballroom, 17th May
2. Doves (with Mercury Rev) at Webster Hall, 18th May
3. Fischerspooner at the Canal Room, 19th May
4. Snow Patrol (with Athlete) at the Roseland Ballroom, 20th May
5. The Decemberists at Warsaw @ the Polish National Home, 26th May

I've bought tickets for all except (5). A friend in NYC who's going to the show with me is buying them direct from the venue to save handling costs (in America, handling fees are around 30% of the ticket price). The Decemberists are a real grower; I wasn't too impressed with their sound at first but once I checked out their lyrics, I got hooked. I am particularly and inexplicably moved by "The Soldiering Life". I really am.

One other artist I've gotten into is Feist. Her debut album, Let it Die, betrays the dourness of its title by being one of simplest, loveliest listening experiences in recent months. It has just enough variety so that it surprises at many turns, yet doesn't come across as loose or eclectic. Her cover of Ron Sexsmith's "Secret Heart" brings a smile to my face everytime I listen to it. And even though I have no idea what "Tout Doucement" means, its tune is one of sheer delight. Small wonder then that she, of all people, was invited to guest on the Kings of Convenience's second album.

...And They Will Live Happily Ever After

It's finally begun. I got this email just a while ago:

Dear friends in A01D,

I'm sorry to surprise so many of you this way, but I will be getting married on 25 June this year. The wedding will be from 2pm to 5pm on a Saturday. If you would like to attend, please e-mail us at xxxxxx@gmail.com and give your mailing address, so that we can send you an invitation card.

Thanks, and best regards :)

It comes from a junior college classmate who graduates in July. He's the second last guy of our class to get attached, and many of our classmates don't even know he's got a girlfriend. This announcement will be especially unreal to them, I'm sure. What next? Will the floodgates will open, as they did with my girlfriend's own friends? It's funny people are reminded of how old they are only when their friends (i) get married, and (ii) die. Welcome to my life Mk II, then...

The End of the Affair

And so I find closure at last: I will never meet the girl who inspired three of my latest songs; the girl who gave new impetus to my life; the girl who reminded me of who I really am.

We will never share the 3am suppers I can only dream she would spontaneously call me out for, as she does with her friends; nor will we colonise abandoned buildings with our reckless laughter. We will not even meet up for lunch in school.

(No it's not romantic; it never was for either of us.)

It's not that she's distancing herself from me. She still feels the same connection we felt months ago, and she still thinks it would be nice if we could meet...sometime. Meanwhile, she's too busy to think as she pours herself across more activities than she can handle. And besides, she now tells me that meeting up and hanging out is too narrow and conventional a view of friendship.

I don't know if it's a problem with me, in that I keep meeting girls like that; or whether it's a problem with short, intense, intensely chic, attractive, atheistic literature-theatre type girls who fall hopelessly in love with everything that makes them feel larger than they really are, even if it pulls them to pieces.

Is she a tragic figure? Does she do this because she thinks there's no one thing that can satisfy her existential emptiness, even if there is? Is that why she's had at least four boyfriends in the last 2 years? Is the fact that she's comfortable with leaving it at faceless, soundless communication--just like the girl before her--something she genuinely feels, or is it an excuse borne of contingency, that's grown to become a self-fulfilled reality?

I'll never know. I'm just glad that I don't have to waste time waiting for her anymore.

Shake it Around in the Underground

Astreal at RNDM: Insert your own "blue balls, big phallus" joke here.

Last night, I attended a non-stop local indie music gig at The Attic at Mox. When I told a friend of mine that I'd never heard of the place prior to this, she suggested I was 'straight' by which I assume she means I should get out more often. And she's right.

Much as I like a whole range of alternative genres, my knowledge of the scene (local and global) has always been at best vicarious--I read much more than I actually listen or attend. Reasons aside, the upshot of this is that I often romanticise the indie ethic while forgetting what it means to actually live the life and walk the talk.

It was only natural then that I felt extremely vulnerable despite thoroughly digging the music and atmosphere. Everywhere I looked, I imagined scenesters bearing down on me, faulting me for only having been to two full-blown concerts and going clubbing less than 10 times in my life. My inner child wanted to scream out "but nobody ever asks me to!!"...but I know that's just an excuse.

Tiramisu at RNDM: they're really as fun as they look.

Attending the gig also made me realise that the scene--in terms of both bands and groupies--is now beginning to fill up with people my age. I was surprised at the number of audience members I knew from my time in junior college. I saw people who recognised me, people who didn't, and people who probably recognised me but pretended they didn't because they either (i) felt awkward like I did or (ii) felt they'd moved so far ahead of me in coolness and were disgusted that I was now sharing the same indie air as them.

And it makes sense too. It's people of the early twenties age group that have the energy, resources and experience to realise their teenage rock dreams at a decent level of professionalism. It's also this group that has the pre-marital mobility and post-adolescent legitimacy to immerse themselves as audiences in the nightly scene. The musical influences are telling of this fact: two local bands I read about separately in Aging Youth and The Ridge claim influences from a number of Britpop bands including Suede. Of course, I cursed the fact that they beat me to it, but nevertheless it reflects the truism that people are most affected by the music of their formative years: Suede themselves were heavily influenced by the 70s-era glam-rock of David Bowie.

Goodness, all these bugbears coming out of just watching part of a gig? I must still have serious issues.

On a more cheerful note, RNDM unearthed my musical find of the week: The Analog Girl. Even though she only came on after I left with my girlfriend, I bought her EP (as well as every other CD that was on sale) on good faith, as part of my personal policy of supporting local musicians.

The Bluest Screen of Death

It had to happen sooner or later, but still it was sudden.

My computer has malfunctioned. I don't know what the problem is yet, and I'm hoping some of you can help me.

So there I was, working on a Wordpad document at home last night, when I left my room for a glass of water. When I came back, the entire screen was a bizarre electric blue. Nothing I pressed short of Ctrl-Alt-Del caused even the slightest flicker. When I turned it off, the blue collapsed into a blinding vertical blue line in the middle of the screen before disappearing.

I'd show you all the photo I took of it, except WHOOPS, I can't post it because I need Hello to do that, and that's on my computer (I'm posting this from a computer in school).

Thank goodness I've the sense not to keep any of my schoolwork on my hard disk. But all my songs-in-progress are there. I generally only back up a song once it's complete, so I still have many unfinished works--including pieces for my student club's musical--in there.

I really hope it's only the monitor.

Know thy Minister

This will be funny only for Singaporeans.

A management module project mate just got back to me with the transcript of an interview I and another project mate did with a director in a local company. The interview was recorded with the director's permission.

Somewhere in her transcription was the line "We got the VIvian Ganna chrisnan of MOM to officiate the exihibition."

I was tickled red by this. Even if the recording wasn't clear, there's no way any literate Singaporean can or should fluff Vivian Balakrishnan's name, what with his high profile these days. If you don't know your MP(s), then at least know your Cabinet Ministers yeah?

Spot the Difference

Forget that one of them is silver; that one also comes in black. Look the same? I thought so too.

The one on the right is my first MP3/WMA player. I bought it at a university bazaar in February last year for the princely sum of SGD $220. It has a capacity of 256MB and has inbuilt voice recording (8 kpbs ACT format) and flash disk functions. Within 8 months, the flash disk function was the only feature that still worked.

Since then, I've been meaning to get a new MP3 player, the music junkie that I am. For the longest time I considered going back to the dealer and getting an identical one since I *thought* $220 was a reasonable price.

For once, my procrastination powers saved the day.

On Monday, I noticed a new bazaar stall in my university selling the player on the left. It also has a capacity of 256MB, flash disk and voice recording (WAV and ACT) functions. But on top of that it boasts an inbuilt FM tuner with excellent reception, the capability to record direct from the said tuner and a much louder volume. Not to mention weird extras like the ability to vary the tempo of your MP3s without altering their pitch, and multicoloured backlighting. Oh, and it's much lighter, too.

This baby cost me all of $89.

The only thing that could make it a worse deal is if all its non-flash disk functions ceased after a month. But that's not going to happen, is it?

Dressed for Success

(text for this is forthcoming)

(text for this is forthcoming)

Music Bulletin #1

I realise I'm making more and more fanboy-ish blog entries on music, so from now on I'll just set them all apart by calling them Music Bulletins. For starters, I've now got tickets for two shows when I travel to NYC in May:

1. Kasabian (with Mad Action) at the Bowery Ballroom, 17th May
2. Snow Patrol (with Athlete) at the Roseland Ballroom, 20th May

I was considering adding (3) Nine Inch Nails (with Dresden Dolls) at the Hammerstein Ballroom 16th May to the list, but passed on it for a number of reasons. I've also discovered, to my dismay, that I will miss New Order's gig in NYC by a good 10 days.

On another note, I'm getting excited about The Tears' forthcoming debut, "Here Come the Tears". I've posted about them a number of times--they're the new band formed from the ashes of Britpop giants Suede. That was a band that pushed my musical, lyrical and aesthetic buttons, and just about everything I like about them seem to be surfacing in The Tears. Listen to their debut single recorded off internet radio here and check out their album artwork.

Incidentally, I was elated to find a webpage with photos and videos of the Suede concert (Fort Canning Park, Singapore) I attended in January 2003. Apart from holding a special meaning for my girlfriend and I, it also achieved some notoreity among fans for being the only stop in that tour in which Brett Anderson bared his torso. He was actually fined for it!

The Ego Has Landed...Twice

I had the privilege of coming face-to-face with two Singaporean celebrities today.

Make that self-made celebrities, with sizeable egos to boot.

I saw the first during a casual trek through a bazaar held at my university. Bazaars like this occur back-to-back throughout every semester and are run by various student clubs. They serve up such similar fare that you often don't know when one's ended and the next one's started. So there I was, taking in more of the same when I walked past...XIAXUE!!


The best Asian blogger of 2005 (in lilac and white).

For those not in the know, Xiaxue (Wendy Cheng) is Singapore's most famous female blogger. Known for her irreverent, vulgar rants as well as her vain photo-documentation of her own existence, she gets a gazillion hits a day on her blog and recently bagged a Best Asian Blog award. She was peddling t-shirts in her capacity as the product ambassador for Local Brand. Believe the hype: small crowds formed around the stall as people actually chatted with Wendy, asking for autographs and photos.

The next celebrity I shared air with was Singapore's self-styled motivation guru Adam Khoo. Being a skeptic, I've always wondered how people in his profession can use speech alone to get audiences of thousands on their feet, chant self-empowerment slogans and shed tears of epiphany. All the more so when Khoo constantly markets himself with the brash, annoying credentials of "top 1% at the NUS business school, serial entrepreneur, millionare at the age of 26". I therefore jumped at the chance to witness his powers when an email was circulated among NUS students promoting a free seminar by the man.


If it's possible for others to spell "it's", it's possible for you too, Adam.

Attending the 3-hour session confirmed a suspicion I had all along: motivational speakers are convincing because everything they say is patently true. Yes, "success doesn't happen by chance". Yes, "a good certificate is only a ticket to your first job, nothing more". Yes, "if you don't plan your life, others will plan your life for you, and they won't have good plans". And yes, "while most people want / prefer / like / hope to succeed, only a few feel they MUST succeed and that makes the difference".

The trick is that these truths are arrived at in such a way that they don't seem obvious (thereby giving the speakers plenty of credit for being able to figure them out). They are also delivered with great flair and vigour: Adam spoke non-stop, using powerful gestures and occasional cutesy acting. What we should be skeptical of, therefore, is not whether or not their self-improvement strategies work--I'm sure they do--but whether or not they are worth paying $2,800 to learn.

The answer isn't a flat no. Some people genuinely need people like Khoo to help them see the light, and his full 8-day course may be the best thing that can happen to them. But many literate, intelligent and self-reflexive others, I think, would do just as well with a $28 self-help book. I myself felt rather out of place when Khoo kept alluding to difficult goals such as "getting on the Dean's List", since I've been awarded seven consecutive Dean's List placings in my time at NUS so far.

Yet, I won't deny that the session was motivating. I found myself nodding and laughing out loud at several points. I also honestly felt, for a while after it was over, that I had a blueprint to solve some other nagging issues in my life (such as the chronic procrastination in my job hunt). But it didn't last long. Khoo would say that I'm allowing my old patterns of negative representation to dominate my present actions. Maybe he's right. Maybe I'm just too proud to say that I need his help. Or maybe I really don't. Who knows?

The Games We Used to Play

Dinner tonight was at Holland Village's TCC outlet, with people involved in YouthInk. Conversation was polite at first but really picked up when gaming was mentioned. I declared my distaste for the 3-D realism of today's offerings, and before I knew it, the five of us (girls and guys alike) were reminiscing about old-school computer games such as Sword of the Samurai, Karateka and Alley Cat.

We also spoke about old DOS-based programs such as Wordstar and WordPerfect, text adventure games, and how kids these days wouldn't be able to navigate through DOS to save their lives. Those were the days of CGA (4-colour) and EGA (16-colour) graphics, PC speaker sounds and filenames that HAD to be eight characters in length. 640KB of RAM, anyone?

Gamebooks--a sadly extinct game form--were also mentioned, with not a little gushing about the cult classic Be An Interplanetary Spy series. To round off the nostalgia, we tossed around a few 80's TV series names: Manimal, Magnum P.I., TJ Hooker, Miami Vice, Fall Guy and the A-Team.

It was a lovely little evening, especially since I'm recovering well from my cold. I meant to blog about the Buddhist sharing session I attended before dinner, but the feel-good vibes of tonight's gathering seem more compelling and immediate. I saw and had, for the first time in my life (though I pretended it wasn't), a cup of alcoholic coffee with flambéd sugar. I also got some tips about getting a job at Singapore Press Holdings. And of course, a desire to go straight home and download some of those good old games of yesteryear.

I leave you, dear reader, with this little souvenir. It'll be a treat if you're around my age, and a history lesson if you're younger. It's the real deal; remember, it can only be run from the MS-DOS prompt.

All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

It came to that, yes. I'd changed up and packed my things, ready to head off.

But I felt exhausted, and finally yielded to my disruptive jackhammer coughs, mouth-immobilising ulcers and leaky-nosedness. My classmates will be very disappointed that I'm not joining them yet again, but in my current state I'd rather stay overnight at home, where going through tissue boxes doesn't inconvenience anyone.

If nothing else, illnesses are frustrating because they make me blog in self-pity, when I'd much rather write on the issues of the day. I really don't think anyone's interested in entries that go on about one's ailments, but I can't help it much when the foremost sensations I experience throughout the day are precisely those ailments.

In any case, here's a rumination on health, and how it's treated in modern urban societies.

Health is like a mobile phone. We (Singaporeans, at least--not sure if it's the same in other countries) always expect the mobile phones of our friends and colleagues to be on 24/7. When we ring and get a recorded message saying that the phone is off, we get all jittery: is he / she avoiding me, we ask ourselves. The truth, usually, is less sinister: the phone battery may have gone flat; the owner may be watching a movie, bathing or having sex...things that often happen in the course of daily life.

Now why do we expect people to be on call all the time? I suppose it has to do with how technology has sped up the pace of life. Emails and mobile phones were devised to make hitherto difficult tasks easier, and they've done the job so admirably that we've gone about making tasks even more difficult to capitalise on our technological advantage.

Similarly, the fast pace of modern life--coupled with the irresistable profit motive of private businesses--makes us plan our work (or makes others plan work for us) with no provisions for people falling sick, even though that too happens in the course of life. I've seen too many tight deadlines and important events scheduled with the assumption that the key players would be in fine health till they were done. I've also heard of people refusing to take sick leave because of the inability of their colleagues to cover for them.

In short, the working world isn't very kind towards poor health.

I'm not advocating that every job we have to do should have a buffer period in the event of an illness. That simply wouldn't be practical. My observation here is simply of a much larger problem (if you could call it one): a particular work ethic; a certain way of life that has been shaped by social and technological forces.

Caught a Lite Sneeze

I can't believe it. I've fallen ill again.

The symptoms are a running and blocked nose, mouth ulcers, a sore throat and a cough. This wouldn't be half as frustrating if I didn't just recover from another bout a few days ago. It was a cold that started in January but worked itself into a dry cough that hung around for weeks.

It wouldn't be half as frustrating if I hadn't resolved, upon the cessation of that cough, to finally get off my ass and work off my love handles and moobs in the coming months.

It wouldn't be half as frustrating if my parents weren't so quick to lament how their son "still doesn't know how to take care of himself", as they always do when I fall sick.

And it wouldn't be half as frustrating if a group project mate didn't just induct a highly annoying person into the group--a prissy person who glared at me in class when I snorted from hacking and coughing too much. This person is going to wonder why I'm so sickly, and the sad thing is, I wonder too.

My sociology honours mates are staying over at a chalet tomorrow, and I hoped to join them in good health. I've been skiving from their gatherings of late, and was really looking forward to this one. I'll still go, because I want and feel obliged to, but it'll be really awkward exhibiting my symptoms and being a potential wet blanket. Also, my Dad's probably going to raise a ruckus over how I still don't know how to take care of myself, heading for parties when I should be recovering at home.

Sigh.

On a more cheerful note, more acts are announcing May tour dates in New York. Of particular interest to me is industrial music stalwart Nine Inch Nails, who appears at the Hammerstein Ballroom on the 15th and 16th. Tickets go on sale to the general public in less than 72 hours, so I have to decide and act fast.

Another act swinging by the Big Apple is Hoobastank. They're playing on the same night as Snow Patrol. Music geeks, doesn't the fact that I'm watching Snow Patrol that night suddenly seem a lot cooler?

Oh and look at this, it's on in NYC in May too. Rather hilarious, especially if you're a guitar player.

As for myself, what can I say...true to my distractable nature, I've put "Living History" on hold, having been hit with renewed inspiration for an old song idea, "Time to Kill". The way it's shaping up now, it's a stomper and it will probably be my album opener...if I ever finish the album(!)