Memory and Desire

Please visit my other site

2007-03-01T21:42:00.000+08:00

I am still blogging, at Blowin' In The Wind. I used to post the same material here and there, wanting to try out different weblog services. But then I read about this "Google duplicate penalty" which penalises bloggers for posting duplicate content. So I will stick to just one site. Cheers.

Google coming to Singapore?

2007-02-27T21:59:00.000+08:00

Singapore should be so proud. "Google to open R&D centre in Singapore", said the front-page headline in The Straits Times today. "The centre -- Google's first in South-east Asia", said the report, "is a coup for Singapore". Yes, indeed. So why hasn't the story been picked up by other local media?

I couldn't find the report on the Channel NewsAsia website even several hours after The Straits Times broke the story.

That is surprising -- especially since the story has already appeared in the International Herald Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, the Hindu in India and several other websites around the world. Could it be professional rivalry that kept the local news channel from picking up the local newspaper report?

Unlikely. While The Straits Times and Channel NewsAsia belong to two different media companies, their owners are also business partners. They are joint owners of the freesheet, Today, and local television channels. What's more, Channel NewsAsia belongs to a government-linked company which highlights Singapore's achievements. I was surprised it didn't pick up the story.

Could this be the reason? Let me quote the follow-up story by the Associated Press. It says there are no firm plans yet for a Google R&D centre in Singapore. Here's the AP story:
Internet search company Google Inc. plans to open a research and development centre in Singapore, its first in Southeast Asia, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Google's managing director of Southeast Asian sales and operations, Richard Kimber, was quoted in The Straits Times newspaper as saying Singapore was picked for its "very vibrant ICT (information, communications and technology) space.

A public relations firm representing Google in Singapore, The Hoffman Agency Singapore, did not deny the report, but said Kimber's comments were meant to recognize the city-state's efforts to foster talent in the industry and did not address the possibility of setting up a research and development centre here.

"Google's continually exploring opportunities to further our investment in Singapore and around the world, which includes actively hiring local talent across various positions. We do not have anything to announce at this time," Hoffman said in an e-mailed response to questions.

I found the story in The Age, published from Melbourne, after a Google News search. AP initially repeated just what The Straits Times said. The International Herald Tribune and other websites picked up AP's initial story. The Age published the follow-up.

I still refuse to disbelieve The Straits Times story. After all, it said:

"Although it (Google) is tight-lipped about details, it is already on the hunt for engineers to start things rolling. In particular, it needs an R&D director to head operations."

You don't get such details without deep digging.

AP in its follow-up said that, according to Google's public relations agents in Singapore, the Google executive quoted by The Straits Times "did not address the possibility of setting up a research and development centre here" in Singapore. Then why should The Straits Times say so? Even the most inexperienced reporter won't make such a mistake, let alone someone from The Straits Times.

Not The Times' university rankings

2007-02-26T22:59:00.000+08:00

The university rankings widely reported in Singapore -- in which the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University come out among the best in the world -- are not compiled by The Times of London. The Times Higher Education Supplement is owned by TSL Education which on its website describes itself as "a stand-alone business".

The company and the Supplement used to belong to News International, which publishes the Times. A Google search led to a Straits Times report in November 2004 which began with the words:

"The National University of Singapore (NUS) has beaten several reputable
institutions, including Cornell and Columbia in the United States, to emerge No.
18 in a Times of London ranking of the world's 200 best universities."

The reporter, Sandra Davie, was right. At that time, The Times Higher Education Supplement belonged to the same group as The Times.

But the Supplement and its publisher, TSL Education, changed hands in 2005. News International sold them to Exponent Private Equity in 2005 for 235 million pounds.

This was mentioned in the Guardian last week when it reported the Supplement's editor, John O'Leary, had resigned. He left "after a period of disagreements with the paper's owner over its future direction", said the Guardian. It added he was a former education editor of The Times. He was mentioned as the Supplement's editor in the Straits Times report in 2004.

In the Supplement's latest annual rankings, NUS was 19th last year, up from 22nd, and NTU 61st, down from 48th. This was reported by the Singapore media and mentioned by various ministers. The reports I saw correctly called them the Times Higher Education Supplement rankings -- but didn't say whether or not they had anything to do with The Times. Still, I guess they attract the same attention as the US News and World Report rankings of US colleges.

The Wikipedia says:

"The Times Higher Education Supplement, also known as The Times Higher or
The THES for short, is a newspaper based in London that reports
specifically on issues related to higher education. It is owned by TSL Education
which was, until October 2005, a division of News International ... The THES is
probably best known for publishing The Times Higher - QS World University
Rankings in partnership with QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd, which first
appeared in November 2004, with new rankings published annually."

Singapore: The future Venice?

2007-02-24T15:49:00.000+08:00

San Marco (left) and an artist's impression of the Marina Bay Sands.

Singapore the future Venice? No kidding. This vision of the future comes from the father of Singapore himself. Enthusiastic about the downtown Marina being built around Marina Bay, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said yesterday: "The Marina will be like the St Mark's Piazza in Venice." Wow!

And will the upcoming Marina Bay Sands, the giant casino cum convention centre -- sorry, integrated resort -- be the Basilica of this St Mark's Piazza in Singapore?

Sorry, no offence meant. One may be a church and the other a casino. But the latter is also expected to be a tourist attraction. And let's look at the bright side. One can only marvel at the religious artefacts in the Basilica. In the casino, one can hope to get rich.

Not that I am dying to visit the casino, but good luck to those who do. I am all for more people coming to Singapore. And there's no reason why the developers can't transform the Singapore waterfront into something as breathtaking as the Piazza. There's the bay, the money's flowing in, all that's missing is a few hundred years of history. And, instead of the basilica, there will be a casino. But nobody wants an exact replica. The Minister Mentor said "like St Mark's".

He doesn't make empty promises. That's why any comparison with St Mark's -- though I would love to see it again -- makes me nervous. Venice is sinking.

Who is Britain's greatest living author?

2007-02-23T14:29:00.000+08:00

Clockwise from top left: Amis, Pinter, Naipaul, Rushdie, Rankin, Stoppard, Rowling and Hornby (in the centre).

If Martin Amis isn't Britain's greatest living author, who is? asks the Guardian today. Amis is certainly the flashiest. His brilliance with words simply dazzles. No one comes close except Salman Rushdie, whose name also came up in the random survey of writers, critics and booksellers.

But Rushdie has moved to the US. Still, Amis has plenty of competition. The biggest contenders whose names came up most frequently in the survey were Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Doris Lessing and VS Naipaul. Two of them have won the Nobel prize. But Pinter and Stoppard are playwrights. My choice would be a novelist.

I would choose Naipaul over Amis. Not just because I am an Indian. Naipaul has been around much longer and has covered a lot more ground, starting when Amis' father, Kingsley, was the famous writer in the family. Naipaul is a great writer in every sense, not just a story teller but a social critic like Dickens or Tolstoy.

Amis is also more than a novelist. I haven't read his criticism but have read his pieces on the War on Terror. Some may not like it, but he isn't afraid to speak up.

Still, I wouldn't call him Britain's greatest living author for one simple reason: He can be heartless. Think of books like Money and London Fields. There's no question about their brilliance. London Fields stands the whodunnit formula on its head. But it also shows a cruel streak. Some of the characters are treated with such utter contempt it becomes tiresome: Why write about them at such length at all unless one got a kick out of savagely ridiculing them? Satirists do that. But compare London Fields with Catch 22 and the difference is striking. Catch 22 is funny, not London Fields.

No wonder Amis is a sharply polarising figure -- the Hillary Clinton of the literary world -- equally hated and admired. (The same may be said of Rushdie. I prefer him to Amis.)

Interestingly, JK Rowling was also named by some in the survey as one of Britain's best living authors. She wasn't the only popular writer to make the list. So did Nick Hornby and Ian Rankin. Hornby is funny. I love Rankin.

Photoshopping my wife

2007-02-22T22:17:00.000+08:00

Some of the pictures in my computer are older than Windows PCs. They show my wife just after our marriage. Fair and lovely, with a red bindi on her forehead and red sindoor in the parting of her hair, her creamy skin swathed in bright silk, she faces the camera with the shining eyes of a newlywed who has discovered how deeply she is loved and cherished. She looks beautiful on the beach, beautiful on the hills, beautiful in the gardens we visited.

She loves travelling and photography and that's how we ended up with these beautiful reminders of our early years. Even today, looking at them takes my breath away. My God, what a beautiful woman I married!

She teaches at a college in Calcutta while I am in Singapore. That's why I scanned the pictures into the computer -- so I could see her every day. But the pictures had faded by the time I scanned them in. After all, we have been married for more than 20 years.

I have brighter, more recent pictures of her and she is still beautiful. But I wanted the faded old pictures to sparkle too. I have an old Adobe Photoshop Elements which can transform pictures. But I was scared of damaging the originals by trying to tweak them. So I decided to copy the pictures and tweak the copies instead. If they didn't look good, I could trash them -- the originals would still be intact.

I needn't have worried -- the copies turned out to be much better than the originals. And it was so easy. All I had to do was open the pictures with Photoshop Elements, copy them by clicking on "Duplicate Image", then tweak the duplicated image with two clicks -- "Enhance" and "Quick Fix". I clicked on "Quick Fix" and a pop-up box opened, offering options like "Colour correction" and adjustments in "Focus" and "Brightness".

I noticed the difference as soon as I clicked on "Colour correction". The picture was immediately transformed. It emerged in all its colour and lost that faded look.

Now I can see the pictures of my wife undimmed by time. They just needed touching up with Photoshop.

The Great Gatsby

2007-02-21T07:33:00.001+08:00

Scott Fitzgerald and video of The Great Gatsby starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow.

Now I know why Scott Fizgerald is considered one of the finest American writers. I just finished reading The Great Gatsby. This little novel, just over a hundred pages long, is an absolute gem, a love story that's also a morality tale. Nick Carraway, the young narrator, starts his story with his father's advice:

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

“Whenever you feel like criticising any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

Immediately, we know he comes from a well-off family. Money and status are central to this novel.

Jay Gatsby, the Great Gatsby, was a self-made millionaire who "represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn," says Nick. Yet they became friends. Looking back -- Gatsby is dead when the story begins -- Nick says Gatsby had "an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again."

They became neighbours when Nick -- a Yale ("New Haven") man -- left his home in the Midwest to "learn the bond business" in New York after fighting in World War I.

He gives these details in a few sentences before plunging into the action, which begins with his meeting with his cousin, Daisy, and her husband, Tom Buchanan.

He doesn't know Daisy had an affair with Gatsby five years ago. But Gatsby was a poor army officer who was then sent off to Europe. By the time he returned home and became a millionaire, she was already married.

"Immensely wealthy", she is also charming and beautiful. "Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget," writes Nick, recalling the day they met.

Gatsby was still in love with her. That's why he bought a house near her. But they had never met since her marriage. Gatsby befriended Nick to get in touch with her. There's a memorable descripton of their meeting in Nick's house.

Tom, meanwhile, is having an affair with a mechanic's wife. Vulgar, impulsive Myrtle Wilson, openly scornful of her husband, is a violent contrast to charming, delicate Daisy.

But it's Myrtle, not Daisy, who comes to grief. In the end, Tom and Daisy will be responsible for the deaths of Gatsby, Myrtle and her husband. But hardly anyone sheds a tear for the victims. Though hundreds of people used to attend Gatsby's parties, only a handful come for his funeral.

By then we have mixed feelings about him. Nick discovers he was a sham and a crook after all, just as he was always rumoured to be. There's no excuse either for what Myrtle's husband did.

But it seems unfair that Tom and Daisy are not affected at all. The rich lead charmed lives. Nick, who distances himself from them, writes: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . ."

The Great Gatsby is a sweetbitter story of love and ambition and corruption in high society and the toll it takes on those who aspire to that world. And the prose is simply out of this world.

The good Times

2007-02-19T21:49:00.000+08:00

My son is attending a liberal arts college in America where on top of his science courses he has to take other subjects as well. This semester he is reading political science for which he has to subscribe to the New York Times. He has to read the political news, he said.

That may wind up a lot of people. The newspaper has its critics not only in America. I recall a CNN interview with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The interviewer referred to a survey by Reporters Without Borders which claimed Singapore had one of the least free media in the world. Lee, a Cambridge man and a brilliant scholar, promptly asked the woman a counter question: Was there anything she couldn't report about Singapore? No, she said. Lee laughed. How could the media then complain of lack of freedom? Singapore welcomed the media, he said, but expected journalists to be careful when dealing with sensitive issues such as race and religion. And, he added, they should not play an "adversarial role" like the New York Times or the Washington Post.

There could be no New York Times or Washington Post in Singapore -- not because of any lack of freedom. The country is simply too small to support institutions like those. How much diversity of views can you find in a city state of 4.5 million people? There's good government, things work fine, the leadership just doesn't lend itself to the kind of caricature one sees in American and British political cartoons or the kind of personality cult that's encouraged in communist countries. Yes, the media supports official policies. But can you argue with good leadership?

But the situation may be different in other countries.

Personally, I love the New York Times and try to read it online every day.

British journalists and even some Americans say American newspapers are dull compared with their British counterparts. The American newspapers' emphasis on balance, objectivity and political correctness is said to have made them blander than British newspapers. I beg to differ. I regularly read two British newspapers online -- the Guardian and The Times. They are good. But give me the New York Times any day. It has the advantage of geography and geopolitics. America is a more "happening" place -- and how interesting is British politics to a foreigner?

It's true the Guardian and the Times have a lot more to offer besides politics. But so does the New York Times. Its book reviews and technology reports are in no way inferior to those in the Times or the Guardian. And what about the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times? They are just as readable.

In fact, the Americans produce the kind of long, in-depth stories one hardly sees in British newspapers. The Los Angeles Times recently ran a story about kindergarten teachers having problems teaching English to immigrant -- mostly Hispanic -- children. The New York Times had a memorable story about evangelical churches springing up among blacks and Hispanics. The Christian Science Monitor runs some of the most interesting foreign stories I have seen.

The British newspapers, in comparison, tend to be much more focused on the news of the day. That may be due to the fact there's more competition among London newspapers. But that doesn't make them better.

Try Vox

2007-02-19T16:58:00.000+08:00

Wish to blog safely? Try Vox. It's free and you can keep it really private. Use its privacy settings to control who reads your blog. You can make sure it's read only by your family and friends, says the New Times York Times.

Yes, one can password-protect almost every other kind of blog, from Blogger to WordPress. But Vox gives you even greater privacy. You can even decide who sees which item on your blog. Some may be only for your friends, others for your family. All you have to do? Just scroll down to the "viewable by" box below your post, and click on "anyone", "friends and family", "friends", "family" -- or, if you like, "nobody". The last option allows you to save your post as a draft -- viewable only by you.

Vox is really easy to use. So are Blogger, WordPress.com and, I guess, MySpaces. But Vox is better for packrats. You can organise your photos, videos and audios here in neat collections which can be viewed separately from your blog entries. You can even store Amazon.com links to the books you have been reading or want to buy.

Vox is a great choice for bloggers, as I mentioned in December. Even those using Blogger or WordPress could give it a try. You can import your existing blog into Vox with the click of a button. Why should you do so if you are using WordPress.com? You can store more photos here. As for Blogger, it's miles behind in innovation.

My only complaint? Vox doesn't come with a readymade searchbox like Blogger or WordPress. But it was launched only recently. And it's bound to get better. Anyone who wants a good-looking blog with beautiful templates, lovely typography and plenty of storage space should give it a try.

Outside Novena Square today

2007-02-19T13:47:00.001+08:00

DSC01271-(Large)-(Medium)
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

The shopping mall was virtually deserted today with most of the shops closed for the Chinese New Year holidays. There were few people at the bus stop when I walked there from Novena church to catch a bus to visit the temple in Little India.

Thomson Road today

2007-02-19T13:39:00.001+08:00

DSC01264-(Large)-(Medium)-c
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

The Chinese New Year holidays continue for the second day today. Singapore won't be getting back to business until tomorrow. This was the view as I walked out of Novena church today. (Yes, I visited the church today as well.) The row of shops shown in the previous picture are just across the road, which I would normally cross by going up the steps of the pedestrian bridge hidden behind the trees here.

Thomson Road on Chinese New Year's Day

2007-02-19T13:29:00.001+08:00

DSC01242-copy
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

Life gets slow and easy during the Chinese New Year in Singapore, I wrote yesterday. This was the view as I stepped out of the Novena church yesterday.

Gong xi fa cai

2007-02-18T21:47:00.000+08:00

Gong xi fa cai. Here's wishing happiness and prosperity for the Chinese New Year. It's not enough to say, "Happy New Year", as we do on January 1, and when the Bengali New Year begins in the middle of April, when we say, "Shubho Naba Barsha". That's Bengali for "happy new year". In Chinese, you have to wish both happiness and prosperity.

Starting today is the Year of the Pig, which marks another difference from Indian and Western astrology. The Indian and the Western system share the same star signs, though someone who is a Gemini according to Western astrology may be a Scorpio by Indian reckoning. That's because one's sun sign is determined by the date of birth in Western astrology while Indians calculate by the time of birth. But the Chinese zodiac is entirely different, populated by animals unseen in Indian and Western charts. The Year of the Monkey just ended, now comes the Year of the Pig.

It certainly got off to a quiet start like every Chinese New Year here in Singapore. Almost all the shops are closed, there are fewer buses on the roads. Tomorrow is a public holiday too. This is when Singapore really takes a break. Most shops remain open at Christmas, but not during the Chinese New Year. One of the provision shops near my home remains closed for several days.

People were doing last-minute shopping yesterday afternoon before the shops closed. Later, in the evening, I saw an unusual sight: red table cloths laid out on the tables at the food centre. Families and friends sat down to Chinese New Year's Eve dinners served on white plates. Some of the plates had tiny scratches, but it was unusual to see them at all at the humble food centre. It had gone upscale for the Chinese New Year.

Singapore budget highlights boo-boo

2007-02-17T23:01:00.000+08:00

I can't believe this. Some Singapore finance ministry officials ignore the difference between percent and percentage points! Please visit the Singapore government online portal and download a PDF copy of the 2007 budget highlights and read the bits about the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the Singapore version of the sales tax.

The GST will go up from 5 percent to 7 percent from July 1. That, in the highlights, is called a 2 percent GST hike.

Excuse me, the jump from 5 to 7 percent means an increase of 2 percentage points, which is more than 2 percent. The difference is explained in the online Dictionary of English.

A percentage point is a unit expressing the difference between two percentages; a fall of one percentage point would be a fall from ten to nine percent.

But if the 10 percent fell by only 1 percent, it would come to 9.99 percent.

How on earth did the budget highlights end up describing the GST hike from 5 to 7 percent as a 2 percent increase? Let me guess. Subtract five from seven. And the answer is two. But that's kindergarten arithmetic, not how percentages are calculated.

The Economist Style Guide specifically warns against such errors:

Percentage point: A unit of size, a one-hundredth of the total. Not to be confused with percentage change. When something increases by 1 percentage point this may be quite different from a 1% increase. For instance, if GDP grew last year by 1% and this year by 2%, the growth rate this year increased by 1 percentage point compared with last year (the difference between 1% and 2%) and also by 100% (2% is double 1%). A 1% increase would mean that the growth rate this year was only 1.01%.

It's hard to believe that finance ministry officials don't know the difference. Maybe they wanted to keep the budget highlights simple. Apparently, it's not unusual to do so. The online Dictionary of English says:

"When the Chancellor (of the Exchequer, in Britain) announces that he has reduced the bank rate by one per cent, he usually means that he has reduced it by one percentage point."

But is it fair to suggest the GST hike is lower than it actually is? That's the impression given when it's described as a 2 percent increase.

I noticed the error while reading a Straits Times front page report today about the "2 percent GST hike". I thought the mistake had been made by the reporter, but wondered how it passed unnoticed. One expects Singapore's leading newspaper to get its facts right. So I checked the budget highlights -- and found The Straits Times was simply parroting the official line. That's usual in Singapore. All the more reason for officials to be accurate.

Tax relief compared with a business deal

2007-02-16T03:47:00.000+08:00

The cost of living is about to go up in Singapore. The sales tax or the Goods and Services Tax (GST) will go up from 5 per cent to 7 per cent from July 1, the government announced, unveiling the budget yesterday.

Everyone knew about the coming tax hike. The government had been talking of the need to increase revenues so it could help the poor and develop Singapore further. The only question was whether the tax would go up to six or seven per cent.

Now we know. Amusing, isn't it, that the news came just a day after Valentine's Day? Had a romantic dinner? It's time to get real.

The government is there to help. To help the people cope with the tax hike, it announced a GST Offset Package that will cost four billion Singapore dollars (about $2.6 billion) over five years. Of this amount, 1.8 billion Singapore dollars will be paid in cash in the form of tax credits, said the government-linked Channel NewsAsia.

What it didn't say was that the cash assistance to be given to the people was less than what the government-linked Temasek Holdings paid for a stake in the Thai communications giant, Shin Corp. Temasek bought it for $2.1 billion last year from the then Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. The deal raised such a stink in Thailand it eventually brought down Thaksin, who was deposed in a coup. He was excoriated for not paying taxes on that sale. Singapore also felt the heat with the Thais upset by the sale of one of their biggest companies to foreigners.

There's no comparison, of course, between a business deal and people assistance. But the moment I discovered the amount the government would spend, I wanted some figures for comparison. And the Shin Corp deal is still in the news. I found out how much it cost from a recent report in the International Herald Tribune about Thaksin's daughter being called to testify before a Thai panel probing that deal.

The government's relief efforts won't end with the four-billion-Singapore-dollar GST Offset Package. On top of that, to help poorer workers, it will give handouts amounting to 400 million Singapore dollars a year. But to get those handouts, one must work. God helps those who help themselves.

Snowfall shuts down college

2007-02-15T19:55:00.000+08:00

My son said last night that his college was closed yesterday because of heavy snowfall. The roads in his little college town in America were so slippery with ice and snow that driving was banned the previous night. Motorists who broke the ban were given tickets.

A few cars were back on the road yesterday, but the college authorities took no chances. The college was closed so professors wouldn't have to come to class. The students stayed in their dorms and fraternity houses.

It was so freezing cold some of the snow had turned to ice, said my son. My wife and I can't even imagine what it's like. It's sweltering hot here in Singapore. My wife, who is in Calcutta (Kolkata), said it was quite cold there, the winter was not yet over. My son, who was chatting with us online, checked the Calcutta weather -- it was 14 degrees Centigrade -- and chuckled. That's nothing, he said. It was minus 15 in his town.

Weather like that would have been unimaginable to him, too, two years ago when he was still a school student in Calcutta. Winter there meant only wearing a blazer to school or putting on a jacket or some light winter clothing . Now he's got used to ice and snow.

Fats for Valentine's

2007-02-14T19:59:00.000+08:00

One final post for Valentine's Day. After Bob Dylan and George Harrison and the Mamas and the Papas, here's the Fat Man -- Fats Domino. I have wanted to write about him for a long time but didn't want to clutter up this blog with too many videos. However, I find it impossible to describe what he's like without showing him singing and playing the piano. He has such a great time performing.

I remember reading how he suffered during Hurricane Katrina when he was thought to have died in his home in New Orleans. Luckily, he survived.

This song reminds me of the time when my wife and I were still students in Calcutta (Kolkata). We would return home together, taking the tram, every day. She would be the first to get off. Of course, we weren't married then; we lived with our parents. Naturally, the tram conductors got to know us. They smiled when we got married. They could tell because my wife wore sindoor -- a red powder that married Hindu women smear across the parting of their hair.

Now my wife is in Calcutta (Kolkata), I am in Singapore. But we will be chatting tonight. After all, it's Valentine's Day.

Dedicated To The One I Love

2007-02-14T19:10:00.000+08:00

Here's one more song to mark Valentine's Day. This is Dedicated To The One I Love -- my wife in Calcutta (Kolkata). I love this song. Mama Michelle begins the song and is soon joined by Mama Cass. See them dancing together. It's pure magic.

If Not For You

2007-02-14T17:14:00.000+08:00

It's Valentine's Day. The BBC reports it's becoming a special occasion in India now. But we did celebrate even more than 20 years ago. Didn't we, darling? How long have we been married now? More than 20 years. And even before that we would meet up, give each other little gifts and cards on Valentine's Day.

Now my wife is in Calcutta (Kolkata), I am in Singapore, our son is in college in America. I wouldn't have even known it was Valentine's Day today unless I saw that report on the BBC website. It would have been so embarrassing if my wife had to remind me. We will be chatting online with our son later today, but when we decided to do so, no one said it's going to be Valentine's Day.

To mark the occasion, here's my favourite song: Bob Dylan's If Not For You. My wife never complained when I tried to sing it to her though I can't carry a tune for nuts. But what could I do?

If not for you
My sky would fall,
Rain would gather too.
Without your love I'd be nowhere at all,
I'd be lost if not for you,
And you know it's true.

Here's Dylan singing If Not For You with George Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971.

Remembering WH Auden

2007-02-13T00:08:00.000+08:00

This month marks Auden's birth centenary, reminds the Guardian. He was born on Feb 21, 1907. He was the people's poet, says the article in the Guardian. The writer, Theo Hobson, says: "Auden's rise to fame in the 1930s is hard to believe now: it is impossible to imagine a young poet achieving comparable status today.''

Poets no longer enjoy the kind of fame that Auden, Eliot or Yeats had. Perhaps the last poet to receive such attention was Alan Ginsberg. He may not be in the same league, but each of them was the voice of his generation. And their words resonated with those that followed. Yeats, Eliot and Auden were widely read and quoted during my schooldays in Calcutta (Kolkata), when Ginsberg was shocking people with poems like Howl. That also happened to be the time when the Beatles and Bob Dylan were making waves. And the singers eventually became more popular than the poets.

Hobson writes in the Guardian:

"Auden's centenary highlights the poverty of contemporary literary culture. More particularly, it highlights the decline of poetry as a vital public medium. In a sense he was the last Romantic, for no poet since has echoed the sheer ambition of that tradition. It is not enough for the poet to be accomplished in a fiddly verbal skill that is admired by a tiny subculture; he should strive to help an entire culture to think. He should be a special sort of public intellectual, a pioneer of sensibility."

"Auden's genius, or part of it, was to develop a highly intellectual poetry that was also friendly, accessible, public," he adds.

He is right. Auden is not a difficult poet. One doesn't need a guidebook to understand what he is writing about. And his poems are full of social commentary. He remains relevant to this day. What poem could be more contemporary than The Unknown Citizen?

And it's still possible to hear his voice. He can be heard reading his poems on the BBC, Salon and Poets.org.

And now, here is The Unknown Citizen:

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Canned Heat: On the Road Again

2007-02-11T11:55:00.000+08:00

Here's a blues band from the 1960s that I like -- Canned Heat. I was searching for their videos last night and found this gem. That's Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson singing On the Road Again and playing the harmonica. It's a memorable performance that's got the whole band swinging. See Bob "Bear" Hite boogieing in the background.

Try Yahoo Pipes

2007-02-10T21:56:00.000+08:00

Now here's a new way to keep up with anything interesting without actually having to search for it online. Try Yahoo Pipes. Here in Singapore, I try to keep up with news from my old hometown, Calcutta (Kolkata). Besides speaking to my wife, who teaches there, and browsing Calcutta newspapers such as The Telegraph, now I can also get news from various sources through Yahoo Pipes. It pipes a steady stream of information about any topic you choose, collecting the information from blogs and news sites and everything else online.

Yes, Google Alert does the same thing. But that's delivered to your email account. Yahoo Pipes comes as a news feed, which means it's being updated all the time. And you don't have to check your email to get the information. I simply go to Bloglines or My Yahoo to get the latest news.

I have set up Yahoo Pipes for Calcutta and Singapore. ( I want to know what's being said by the bloggers and foreign media and not just the Singapore newspapers.) And the Singapore Pipe is working just fine. The one for Calcutta is buggy. But give it time. The Yahoo Pipes were launched only two or three days ago.

Yahoo Pipes goes even further than Google News, Pubsub and Technorati. You can use them to get a news feed on any topic of your choice, but can you publish the feed on your own website? You can with Yahoo Pipes.

And you don't have to be programmer to use Yahoo Pipes. All I did was go to Yahoo Pipes website, browse the readymade Pipes and click on the one called Aggregated News Alerts. That took me to a page which said, "Configure this pipe", and asked "What news are you looking to track"? In the search box, I typed "Singapore" and clicked. That created a Pipe Preview showing a collection of stories about Singapore. I clicked on the Subscribe button. Up popped more buttons giving me the choice to subscribe through Bloglines, My Yahoo and various other news readers. I chose Bloglines and My Yahoo and my Pipes were installed.

Actually, one doesn't need a news reader to read the Pipes. Click on the "Get as RSS" button. That creates a version you can publish or read on your web browser.

More on Times Online's new look

2007-02-10T15:17:00.000+08:00

I wrote last night that I don't like Times Online's new look introduced this week. The display is too brassy and bold, too in-your-face, more like a giant billboard. The headlines and pictures hit you squarely in the eyes, there is little unused white space to give your eyes a rest. Gone are the elegant old black nameplate, generous white space and restrained display that gave the website a touch of class. Times Online was one of the best looking websites in my view. But I am an old fogey. Any product has to appeal to a younger market.

I may not like the new look, but this is the boldest redesign I have seen online. Times Online has been completely tranformed, no other new site has been through a makeover as radical as this. The black and lime green nameplate -- which I don't like -- the blue headlines, the sans serif typeface, the new navigation tabs below the nameplate, and the pictures and text running across the whole page with hardly any margin left give the website a busy, colourful look. Maybe this is what you need to attract the MySpace Generation.

We old fogeys will still browse The Times and get used to the new look. But our days are numbered. No publication can survive without younger readers.

The new-look Times Online

2007-02-09T23:50:00.000+08:00

I was shocked when I checked Times Online last night. It looked absolutely different. It changed to a new look four days ago, says Times Online editor in chief Anne Spackman, to be more accessible and easily navigable. But as a result it looks like a WordPress blog, and not a well-designed one at that. The black and lime green nameplate looked dreadful at first sight. The old design with the elegant black nameplate had a touch of class. It suggested quality journalism. The new design with its liberal use of red and blue and green sheds the old image completely.

Rupert Murdoch obviously doesn't go for looks. The Times today looks like any other tabloid, what sets it apart is the content. But while the makeover to a tabloid might have made sense, why redesign the website? It was already running blogs and interacting with readers. One unstated reason may be advertising. The new design looks like a giant billboard with plenty of display space on the right.

There's been one improvement, though. I could search for articles faster. "Sponsored by Windows Live" says the text next to the search box. What's the bottom line?

New Year's evening

2007-01-01T19:46:00.000+08:00

The temple was far more crowded than the church when I visited them both before noon today. This is a habit I picked up from my wife: visiting houses of worship on New Year's Day. She visited the Kali temple at Kalighat in Calcutta (Kolkata) with my son today while I went to the Novena church and the Sri Veerakaliamman temple in Little India, Singapore.

This was my son's second trip to the temple since he flew home from his college in America before Christmas. My wife took him to the temple the very day he arrived. Usually he objects because of the crowds. But this time he didn't object too much, said my wife. He knows he has to listen to his mum.

Had my wife been in Singapore, she would have insisted we visit another temple at Potong Pasir. That's what we did when she was last here on New Year's Day. But I left home too late; the temple at Potong Pasir might have been closed by the time I got there from Little India.

The temple in Little India was so crowded I couldn't even get a good look at the deities. So I went there again before 5 pm, knowing there would be fewer worshippers then. We go to say our prayers. But we had a rough time last year and I can't pretend things are looking up. My mother-in-law passed away. I had to leave my old job. Uncertainty still stares me in the face. Still, we have to appreciate what we have.

I am savouring this quiet evening at home, in the fading light before sunset, waiting to speak to my wife and my son. They had a visitor when I called them after returning home from the temple. So she said she would call me later. That will make my day.

I may not be wise or bright. There wouldn't have been problems at work if I had been considered good enough. But with age I have learnt to appreciate the little things. A few minutes on the phone with my son and my wife is all I ask for -- till the day we can be together again. I last saw my son in June-July during his summer holidays when I visited Calcutta to see him. I last saw my wife in October when I went to Calcutta again after her mother passed away. We will be together again.

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T01:12:00.000+08:00

It's one o' clock here in Singapore.The New Year is already an hour old. I just spoke to my wife and my son in Calcutta (Kolkata). They are at a New Year countdown party there with my sister-in-law, her husband and her daughter.

I will call them again when the New Year finally arrives in Calcutta. That's still one and a half hours away. My son gave me an earful when I said I would be calling again. Ever since he went to college in America, he has been acting awfully grown-up.

But who cares what he says? I have to wish them happy New Year again when the clock strikes midnight in Calcutta. I don't want to be left out when they exchange New Year greetings with others. I just want to reach out to them, tousle my son's hair, hold my wife's hand and look into her beautiful eyes. Oh well. Now that I have spoken to them, I can wish others as well: Happy New Year!

College degree can be a handicap after 50 in Singapore

2006-12-31T17:28:00.000+08:00

It's the end of the year. "Spare a thought for 60,000 jobless in climate of job growth," reported The Straits Times newspaper in Singapore yesterday.

It was referring to the latest government statistics which showed a record number of jobs created this year -- "the economy added 124,500 workers" in the first nine months of the year, said the Ministry of Manpower report -- but 60,700 people were still unemployed. They made up less than 2.5 per cent of the total workforce.

How did we arrive at this figure? Simple. The working population totalled more than 2.4 million including 1.6 million in the service sector and more than 500,000 in manufacturing, according to the Ministry of Manpower. If one includes the number of jobless people, then Singapore had an available workforce of just over 2.5 million. Now, 60,700 out of 2.5 million comes to less than 2.5 per cent.

That's low by any standards. The report said three out of four people were re-employed within six months. But some had it better than others. Among the older workers, for example, the better educated found it more difficult to get new jobs than the less educated. The report said:

"The re-employment rate for older degree holders aged 50 and over improved strongly to 74% in September 2006... However, it remained below the rate for those with secondary (81%), upper secondary (79%) and diploma (91%) qualifications in the same age group."

So a university degree can be a handicap if, after the age of 50, one has to look for a job in Singapore.

By the way, the workforce includes adolescents as young as 15 years old, according to the government report.

For the total picture, download the reports Labour Market, Third Quarter 2006 and Employment, Third Quarter 2006, from the Ministry of Manpower website.

Death of a dictator

2006-12-30T22:42:00.000+08:00

So Saddam Hussein is dead, hanged by his own countrymen. The scenes of rejoicing among the Shias, in Basra and Baghdad, could not have been faked. It was an Iraqi court that found him guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death.

But I do wish the Americans had not been involved. For that is how it will be remembered -- a tyrant hanged in a country protected by foreign powers. Iraq may have a popularly elected government and its own judiciary and security forces, but training those security forces, trying to maintain law and order are American and British troops who continue to fight terrorists and insurgents. No Iraqi court could have sentenced Saddam to death unless US-led forces had invaded the country and hunted him down.

President George W Bush said bringing Saddam Hussein to justice marked an important milestone in Iraq's progress to democracy. He should ask himself instead what has it achieved for America. More Americans have died in Iraq than the 2,973 killed in the 9/11 tragedy and Iraqis are no safer today than under Saddam Hussein.

Global Crossing and the undersea cables

2006-12-29T23:05:00.000+08:00

News junkies may remember it for an accounting scandal. But we in Asia also owe a debt of gratitude to a company like Global Crossing. I, for example, might not have been able to access the New York Times online or post this blog, maintained on a server in the USA, unless someone had gone to the expense and trouble of wiring up the world. And leading the way were Americans, companies like Global Crossing.

I can't recall that being mentioned in The Straits Times newspaper here in Singapore when two days ago Internet traffic virtually ground to a halt across much of Asia-Pacific after tremors off the coast of Taiwan damaged the undersea cables. The report mentioned Asian telecommunications companies among the cable owners. That's true today. But at least some of the cables were laid by the Americans.

On a hunch, I looked up the history of Global Crossing on Wikipedia. And, sure enough, it said:

"In January, 2002, the company (Global Crossing) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. At the same time, a letter of intent was filed by Global Crossing to sell control of the company, seventy-nine percent, to a joint venture between Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa and Singapore Technologies Telemedia. Global Crossing's bankruptcy filing listed total assets of $22.4 billion and debts amounting to $12.4 billion. If ranked by assets, Global Crossing's bankruptcy is the fourth largest filing in American history... Hutchison Whampoa and Singapore Technologies purchased Global Crossing for $750 million, buying it out of bankruptcy."

Companies like Global Crossing and MCI WorldCom suffered because they could not recoup the expense of laying the cables as there was not sufficient demand for them at the time.

Business Week reported: "There are about 15 of these cables. Most of the high-capacity ones were installed in 2001, when companies raced to capitalize on what they thought was an imminent surge in demand for Internet traffic. But demand grew slower than expected, and the building boom ended badly for investors in companies like Global Crossing and MCI."

What turned out badly for companies like Global Crossing proved a boon for Asian telcos. They picked up the pieces cheap. And it must have proved a lucrative investment with surging Internet traffic.

Now there will be a price to pay. Besides repairing the damage, there's also a need to lay more cables. And who will pick up the tab? There may be no free lunch even in the virtual world. Telcos have Internet users by the short hairs. We can't do without the Net.

It's true Internet service providers had been cutting prices with increasing competion. But the tremors off Taiwan which hit Internet traffic and spooked stock markets may have unfortunate ripple effects. Let's hope they don't hit our wallets.

Global Crossing today
Singapore Technologies Telemedia (ST Telemedia) now lists Global Crossing among its companies. ST Telemedia, which also owns the Singapore Internet service provider StarHub, describes Global Crossing as "the owner and operator of the world’s first integrated global IP-based network, which connects over 300 major cities in 29 countries worldwide, and delivers services to over 600 cities in 60 countries and six continents".

Who's behind which cable?

The New York Times reported: "C2C, a $2 billion 10,500-mile cable built in 2002 that links China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan to the United States, was damaged'' by the tremors. This was built by a consortium led by Singapore Telecom or SingTel, reported Reuters.

"The only major cable in the area that appears to have escaped trouble was the E.A.C., or East Asia Crossing, cable belonging to Asia Netcom, a subsidiary of China Netcom," added the New York Times. "The 12,100-mile cable connects China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan." Among those involved in the project was Asia Global Crossing, a joint venture which included Global Crossing, Microsoft and Softbank Corp, websites reported in the year 2000.

Missing my wife and my son on Christmas Day

2006-12-25T13:49:00.000+08:00

I called my wife and my son in Calcutta (Kolkata) when the clock struck midnight there to wish them a merry Christmas. Just because we are Hindus doesn't mean we don't like to spend Christmas and New Year together. That wasn't possible this year, I am still in Singapore. But they are constantly in my thoughts. I can see them on my computer screensaver.

I see pictures of my son as a schoolboy and more recent photos of him wearing a tux on some big occasion at his college in America -- and pictures where he is swaddled against the snow, taken last winter on his college campus.

There are also pictures of my wife as she is now and taken long ago, shortly after our marriage. She looks heartbreakingly beautiful. Her eyes are so innocent and trusting. Otherwise she would have never married me, for I wasn't rich or bright or highly qualified. I don't know what she saw in me but we fell in love and our parents realised there was no point standing in the way.

Somehow I did end up working in Singapore. But she is still teaching at a college in Calcutta. I never found the courage to ask her to leave her job and come to Singapore: I was always haunted by insecurity at my job.

My misgivings proved right when I had to accept voluntary retirement a few months ago. I must have been found wanting, not worth my salt. Someone nevertheless was kind enough to give me a second chance. But the pay is less and I am still on trial. That's why I couldn't go to Calcutta for Christmas. Nor could my family come here. My son, who arrived in Calcutta from his college in America on Wednesday, had no time to get a visa here.

My son was offered a place at a university in Singapore when he finished school in Calcutta two years ago. But he was also offered scholarships in America. One reason I didn't encourage him to come to Singapore was that I was already worried about my job. He would have been on his own if I had to leave Singapore, I thought, so why ask him to come to Singapore when several of his schoolmates were going to America?

So here I am alone in Singapore on Christmas Day, thinking of my wife and my son, seeing their pictures on the computer, and about to call home. I will speak to them as soon as I finish this post. I called them twice yesterday and once after midnight. Now I want to hear their voices again.

Meanwhile, to anyone who stumbles on my blog, merry Christmas.

Unique-Lee in Singapore...

2006-12-24T23:03:00.001+08:00

I just saw Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong being interviewed on CNN. Razor-sharp, with a Cambridge first class honours in mathematics, he had no trouble parrying the usual questions about his family's role in Singapore politics and economy and the lack of government criticism in the local media. The interviewer, Anjali Rao, came off second best when she raised the media issue. "What do you want to say that you dare not say?" he asked her. "Absolutely nothing," she replied. "There you are," he replied with a laugh. "So how are you stifled?" Cool.

Still, the usual question about Mr Lee following in his father's footsteps to become prime minister brought to mind an unusual feature of the Singapore cabinet. Mr Lee is not only following in his father's footsteps; they are members of the same cabinet. That is unusual. Mr Lee's father, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's first prime minister, is still in office, as Minister Mentor.

I have been trying to find parallels elsewhere in the world. Robert Kennedy was attorney general in his brother John F Kennedy's administration. Austen Chamberlain became Britain's postmaster general while his father, Joseph Chamberlain, was Colonial Secretary in 1902. "Old Joe" never became prime minister but his younger son, Neville Chamberlain, did in 1937 -- only to resign three years later when Churchill succeeded him after the failure of his appeasement policy towards Hitler. Indira Gandhi's younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, became her closest adviser while she was India's prime minister. And when Sanjay Gandhi died in a plane crash, his elder brother, Rajiv Gandhi, took his place. When Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister after Indira Gandhi's assassination, he included friends and relatives in his cabinet.

But I can't think of another instance identical to the Lees, where the father is a member of his son's cabinet.

The closest parallel to be found today among non-communist parliamentary democracies, I think, must be in Poland. President Lech Kaczynski's identical twin, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is the prime minister. But they are brothers, not father and son.

Such instances of members of the same family sharing power are more common in the Middle East. There is the Saudi royal family and the al-Maktoums, the rulers of Dubai. But these are monarchies and sheikdoms with royal families. Singapore is different, with elected leaders.

Mr Lee is not only the prime minister; he is also the finance minister while his wife heads Singapore's biggest conglomerate of government-linked companies. But the concentration of power has not been bad for Singapore, which with a per capita GDP of more than $28,000 is Asia's second richest country, surpassed only by Japan. Political dynasties are not necessarily bad; they can be popular too. The Gandhis in India, the Bushes in America, enjoy considerable support, or they wouldn't have come to power. The Lees have already proved their mettle. Singapore has prospered under them just like Dubai under the al-Maktoums.

Plaza Singapura, 3.10 pm, Christmas Eve

2006-12-24T19:14:00.001+08:00

DSC01230-copy
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

From Novena MRT station below the Novena Square shopping mall, I took a train to Dhoby Ghaut, the third and last station on Orchard Road. And there finally it did feel like Christmas as I walked into the Plaza Singapura shopping mall. The Sunday Times today reported: "Bumper sales as shoppers pack malls". This mall was packed all right and bright with Christmas decorations.

But I didn't feel like visiting any other Orchard Road mall. It was raining. And Christmas isn't Christmas when I am alone. I took the train back home from Dhoby Ghaut and called my wife in Calcutta (Kolkata). I also spoke to my son, who has flown home from his college in America to spend his Christmas holidays with her. We used to spend Christmas and New Year together, but we couldn't last year. And this year too it's the same sad story.

Novena Square, 2.40 pm, Christmas Eve

2006-12-24T18:54:00.001+08:00

DSC01212-copy
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

I mentioned the almost total absence of Christmas decorations at a non-downtown shopping mall yesterday. It didn't look like Christmas either at Novena Square, the shopping mall near Novena church just a five-minute train ride away from the Orchard Road shopping district. The Sunday Times today reported: "Bumper sales as shoppers pack malls." But there were no crowds at this shopping mall this afternoon, maybe because of the rain. Nor was the crowd significantly bigger than usual on a Saturday at the mall I visited yesterday. Most of the shoppers must have flocked to Orchard Road.

The crib at Novena church

2006-12-24T18:26:00.001+08:00

DSC01207-copy
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

It was raining when I visited Novena church this afternoon. Maybe that's why there were few people there.

Hardly Christmas at a heartlands mall

2006-12-24T01:17:00.000+08:00

I was surprised to see only one Christmas tree at a shopping mall. It's in what Singapore calls the heartlands -- where ordinary people live, away from the shopping district and the posh areas. But it's next to a subway station and a bus interchange, visited by countless people, and usually does spruce up for Christmas. Yesterday evening, however, I saw nothing special, just the usual signs and lights the shops and department stores display round the year. There was the weekend crowd, but except for the sole Christmas tree at an NTUC FairPrice supermarket and the piped Christmas jingles, one wouldn't have known this is the festive season. The austerity seemed strange considering the economy is reported to be booming and unemployment below 3 per cent.

I am sure the shopping district and tourist trap that's Orchard Road is bright with lights. It's always at its glitzy best at Christmas. This is its peak business season. Christmas in Singapore is as much about luring shoppers and tourists as about merrymaking and festivities. The tourism board tries its best to lure tourists during Christmas and the New Year. The row of festive lights downtown is said to stretch even longer than usual.

I would have gone to Orchard Road to see the lights myself if my family had been here. But my wife is in Calcutta (Kolkata) with my son, who flew in on Wednesday from his college in America to spend his winter holidays with her. Alone, I didn't feel like going to town. Instead, I spoke to my wife and my son on the phone.

But I did expect to see some Christmas decorations at the heartlands mall. It's not as if no one's in a mood to celebrate. The train I caught home from work on Friday night was packed with shoppers and people who had been downtown to see the lights.

I hope to go to Orchard Road later today to see things for myself. But even if it flaunts its usual Christmas glitter, something must be wrong indeed when there's hardly any Christmas decoration at a heartlands mall which usually does dress up for the festive season. Has it given up trying because no matter what the papers say, the effort isn't worth it -- not attracting enough business even when the economy is reported to be booming?

Where Singapore lags behind India, USA

2006-12-22T12:07:00.000+08:00

Communist China ranks way below capitalist USA when it comes to distribution of wealth. China ranks 92nd and the USA 73rd, acccording to the UN Human Development Report 2006. It says China has a Gini index of 44.7 and the USA 40.8. Russia ranks 68th with a Gini index of 39.9. The Gini index is a measure of social and economic inequality, the higher the figure, the greater the inequality.

I wonder what the communists in power in Calcutta (Kolkata) will have to say to that. There is less economic inequality in India, which ranks 29th in the world with a Gini index of 32.5, according to the report. Bangladesh is 28th with 31.8 and Pakistan 24th with 30.5.

The rankings mentioned so far should not be taken to mean that the poorer the country, the less the inequality. Far from it. While oil-rich Azerbaijan takes the top spot, or shows the least economic inequality, with a Gini index of 19, Denmark ranks second with 24.7, Japan third with 24.9, Sweden fourth with 25. They are all rich countries. The Czech Republic is fifth, Norway sixth, Germany 14th, Netherlands 25th, South Korea 27th, Canada 30th, France 32nd, Switzerland 37th, Ireland and Greece joint 40th, Spain 47th, Australia 48th, Italy and Britain joint 51st and New Zealand 54th.

I looked at the report to find out how equitable is Singapore. The tiny city state with a population of about 4.5 million is the second richest country in Asia, after Japan, with a per capita GDP of $28,077. But the Singapore government concerned about poor Singaporeans has decided to raise the Goods and Services Tax -- sales tax -- from 5 per cent to 7 per cent, partly to help them. But how big is the income gap in Singapore? Very big, according to the UN report.

Singapore ranks 8oth with a Gini index of 42.5, behind Burundi (41st), and tying with Kenya which shows the same inequality, out of the 126 countries surveyed. Namibia ranks last.

Neighbouring Malaysia trails behind Singapore, taking the 98th spot with a Gini index of 49.2, but Indonesia is far ahead, sharing the 40th place with Ireland, with a Gini index of 34.3. Thailand is ahead as well, in 77th place with a Gini index of 42, but Hong Kong is behind, coming 85th with a Gini index of 43.4.

The Singapore government is well aware of the economic disparity in the country.

"Yes, the Gini coefficient is very high. Through housing, health care and education, we have tried to narrow the income gap, but not through wages," National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan told Reuters in an interview last month, said a Reuters report published on the CNN website three days ago.

Despite the economic disparity, Singapore ranks very high on the Human Development Index, which takes into account life expectancy, literacy and the GDP. Singapore is ranked 25th in the UN report with a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.916. The only Asian countries ahead of it are Japan in the seventh spot with an HDI of 0.949, Hong Kong which ranks 22nd with 0.929 and Israel which ties with Hong Kong.South Korea is 26th with 0.912.

The rankings have appeared in Wikipedia but one could also look at the country factsheet for Singapore on the UNDP website. One should also read the Reuters report on Singapore. It's an objective look at the country.

My son flies home

2006-12-21T11:29:00.000+08:00

My son flew home to Calcutta (Kolkata) yesterday. He flew with British Airways. His college in America has closed for the winter holidays, so he will be home for a month. My wife was waiting with her sister and niece and a friend to receive him at Dum Dum airport -- now called Netaji Subhas Bose airport -- when the plane landed about an hour after midnight.

He has grown very thin, she said. That seemed strange, considering he goes to the gym in his college. But he avoids fatty foods, he said. We were speaking on the phone, for I am still in Singapore.

My wife and I didn't have a wink of sleep on Monday night (our time) when he boarded his flight. A friend drove him to the airport nearest his college from where he took a flight to Chicago. It was Monday afternoon his time. I called him on his mobile phone at the airport. He had already checked in by then and was having a chocolate sundae after calling his mum. She had been worried because he had not called her before leaving college though he had promised to do so. That's why I called him at the airport. I called her first to find out if she had heard from him. She said no and asked me to call him. But by the time I got through, he had already called her.

I called him again when he landed at O'Hare airport in Chicago. He was then having a BLT at McDonald's. By then he had discovered his bank card wasn't in his wallet. He suspected he had left it at the bank where he had gone to get some money before flying home. So he called his bank from Chicago. They told him they had found his card and wanted to mail it to his college. But they agreed to keep it for him to collect when he returns to his college next month. The bank is only a short walk from his college. So he didn't sound worried at all when he spoke to me, having already called the bank. He said he would check in after finishing his meal.

We know it takes a long time to check in at O'Hare. The queues are very long. So I called again half an hour later to find out if he had cleared check-in. But, no, he was still in the queue. He had to stand in line for a little more than an hour before finally getting through.

From Chicago, he boarded a British Airways flight to London. He reached London on Tuesday morning. I tried calling him at the airport but only got his automated voice message. Later, I learnt he couldn't make or receive calls on his phone in London. He used a pay phone to call home from Heathrow. He spent three hours at Heathrow before boarding another British Airways flight to Calcutta. He had a good time there. He met an old school friend, now studying in another college in America, who was also flying home the same day. His friend was flying to Bombay (Mumbai), where his father had been transferred, on a different British Airways flight. My son and his friend spent time chatting while waiting for their flights. They chat online while in college and knew they were flying home the same day, so my son had been looking forward to meeting his friend at Heathrow.

The British Airways flight arrived in Calcutta after 1 am on Wednesday. But my son had to wait a long time to get his baggage. My wife later told me she got very worried waiting at the airport so long for him to show up. She wondered if his baggage had gone missing like it did the last time when he came to Calcutta by Gulf Air in May. His baggage arrived only the next day then. But it arrived safely with him this time. He was carrying his laptop and digital camera in his backpack and his iPod and mobile phone in his pockets.

He was wearing a red Manchester United jersey which attracted some comments at Heathrow, he said. Some people made disparaging remarks about Manchester United. They must be Chelsea or Arsenal fans, he said. But some of the cabin crew on the British Airways flight told him Manchester United was a great club. That must have pleased him no end.

He laughed about another little incident. On the flight from Chicago to London, the cabin crew gave out little bottles of liquor. Many of the Indians on board took them. Some took two or more and stuffed them in their pockets. But they had to take them out during check-in at Heathrow. The airport officers weren't allowing passengers to carry such bottles. They had to leave them on a counter. An Indian janitor at work happened to see them and quietly sneaked off with a few of the bottles.

Singapore today, 7.30 am

2006-12-19T08:51:00.001+08:00

Picture2-155-(Large)-copy
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

There was a glint of light dispelling the inky darkness that had enveloped the area only 15 minutes earlier. But the rain continued. It's raining even harder now. I just heard the rumble of thunder.

Singapore today, 7.15 am

2006-12-19T08:36:00.001+08:00

Picture2-147-(Large)-copy
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

Another picture taken at the same spot.

Singapore today, 7.10 am

2006-12-19T08:32:00.001+08:00

Picture2-148-(Large)-copy
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

It was this dark this morning. We had a stormy night with frequent thunder and lightning and the rain was still pelting down in the morning. The weather has been skittish of late, with frequent passing showers, but it hasn't rained like this for a long time.

Jejune

2006-12-16T14:58:00.000+08:00

Much of the early Beach Boys' songs are about high school and teenagers. Some of them are quite funny, but they aren't as naughty and knowing as Chuck Berry's celebrations of teenage life. The Beach Boys' Fun, Fun, Fun, for example, is as infectious and more filled with harmony than anything composed by Chuck Berry, but the lyrics aren't in the same league as a Chuck Berry classic like Nadine. In fact, I was about to describe the early Beach Boys' lyrics as "jejune". Not "childish" or "juvenile" but something "adolescent".

Adolescent they are but they can't be called "jejune". Though "jejune" is lumped together with "juvenile" and "puerile" in the thesaurus, there is a difference according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. According to it, "jejune" means "naive and simplistic" and can also mean "dull". The Beach Boys are by no means dull. But that's what "jejune" means according to the COED. It says the word comes from the Latin "jejunus", which means "fasting, barren".

I am surprised that a word derived from the Latin for "barren" became a synonym for "juvenile". The Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary categorically says "jejune" means "juvenile" and "puerile". "Juvenile", "puerile", "infantile" all come from Latin words for children. But "jejune" originally had nothing to do with children. How did it come to be associated with "juvenile"?

Meanwhile, here's Chuck Berry performing Roll over Beethoven. I did find a clip of him performing Nadine with Keith Richard. But this is an all-time classic.

Sloop John B

2006-12-16T07:45:00.000+08:00

The Beach Boys and the Grateful Dead are my favourite American rock groups. They may be very different but both are strong on guitars and harmony and both came out of the West Coast. This is my favourite Beach Boys song, Sloop John B, performed at a concert in England in 1980, long after their glory days in the early 1960s when they were the most successful American band with their "California sound". A very different California sound from that of the Eagles, whom I don't dig at all. The lyrics of the Beach Boys' early songs may be inconsequential, but the harmony is heavenly. Brian Wilson is a genius.

Touch of Grey

2006-12-16T07:42:00.000+08:00

I love the Grateful Dead and this is one of my favourite songs. At my age, it resonates all the more, especially because of what's been happening in my life. I won't go into that now. Let's just look at the brighter side of life. "I will get by," sings Jerry Garcia, "I will survive." It's a great song.

I only wish I could find a video of my other favourite song by the Grateful Dead: Ripple. But no luck there. I couldn't find a video of Ripple. This is as good as it gets: the Grateful Dead performing Touch of Grey at a concert in 1993. Garcia died in 1995 at the age of 53.

Shakespeare mocked

2006-12-09T21:56:00.000+08:00

I wish I had recorded my son's comments on Shakespeare's sonnets: "abab cdcd efef gg." He was referring to the rhyme scheme: Four stanzas of three quatrains and a final couplet set in the iambic pentameter. "The sonnets don't even have titles," he said, "just numbers."

He was making short work not just of the sonnets but of English poetry in general, possibly to annoy his mother, who was chatting online with us.

She teaches English at a college in Calcutta (Kolkata), and he is taking an English course because he has to at his liberal arts college in America. He is doing a double major in science, but on top of that he must take other courses too. He himself chose English. In fact, he writes quite well.

He has been doing scansion. That's something she loves. So she offered to give him a few tips online, but he was having none of it. "Our teacher has told us that 80 per cent of the time, English verses are iambic,'' he said. And he was counting on that to see him through. That's what he claimed. Actually, I have seen a paper he wrote on Tolkien, and I was so impressed. Whether he does it on his own, or whether his teachers make him do it, he has been doing serious work -- and not just on his favourite science subjects but for other courses too.

And he has become so independent. He didn't want his mother to help him even with his English. He had to read Oscar Wilde, he said. My wife immediately went gaga about Wilde's wit and humour. But he cut her short. "Where's the wit and humour in The Picture of Dorian Gray?" he asked. That was the first time we heard he had read Dorian Gray. They had to do it in class, he said. And we didn't know it until last night.

John Lennon remembered

2006-12-08T08:26:00.000+08:00

I was just reminded on the Net that John Lennon was shot dead on this day by Mark Chapman in New York in 1980. YouTube has several clips of how his death was reported.

I am a believer

2006-12-08T03:48:00.000+08:00

This one's for my wife. Our song is If Not For You by Bob Dylan. But this one sets my feet tapping and I love the words. It's really true. We were so young when I fell in love with her and now we have a son in college! I am a believer all right just like the Monkees in this song. I came across this after blogging about Mary Queen of Scots whose birthday it is today, according to Answers. com. Writing about her reminded of Mary, Mary, sung by the Monkees. I found it on YouTube and used it in my previous post -- on Mary. Then, of course, I had to look for my favourite Monkees song. And here it is: I Am A Believer.

Mary, Mary

2006-12-08T02:23:00.000+08:00

What a coincidence. Last night, my wife was telling me about a seminar at her college in Calcutta (Kolkata) on the poet, William Blake, where a university professor speaking about poems like "Tyger, Tyger" touched upon nursery rhymes. They were similar in their apparent simplicity hiding a wealth of meaning, he said. And one of the nursery rhymes he cited was "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?", which he said was believed to refer to Mary, Queen of Scots. I didn't know that, but we had other things to talk about, and after all we were talking long-distance -- she from Calcutta, I in Singapore. So, after hanging up the phone, I went to Answers.com. And, guess what, today is Mary's birthday.

She appears in Today's Highlights. Says Answers.com:

"Mary Stuart, aka Mary Queen of Scots, was born on this date in 1542. She was only six days old when her father, James V, died and she became Queen of Scotland. Mary, a Catholic, was accused of scheming to murder her husband and was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle in 1567. A year later, she escaped and fled to England. Elizabeth I initially provided refuge and then had Mary imprisoned when she was implicated in additional plotting, including a scheme to murder Elizabeth. Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587. When Elizabeth died, she was succeeded by Mary's son, James I of England."

Mary must have been laughing in her grave when the Virgin Queen was succeeded by her son. But her grandson, Charles I, was beheaded like her by the English -- oh perfidious Albion -- but his son, Charles II, returned to rule in 1660 after the regicide Oliver Cromwell's death. It must have been a bit like the swinging 1960s, marred by deadly crises such as the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London, but sexually quite liberated in fashionable circles. Not for nothing was Charles II called the Merry Monarch.

But back to

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells
And pretty maids all in a row."

The Wikipedia is sceptical about any royal connection to the nursery rhyme. It says:

"Like many nursery rhymes, it has acquired spurious historical explanations. One is that it refers to Mary I of Scotland, with "how does your garden grow" referring to how she was doing controlling the country, "silver bells" referring to (Catholic) cathedral bells, "cockleshells" in inference that her husband cheated on her, and "pretty maids all in a row" referring to all her babies that had died and that she buried them in rows. However, Mary Queen of Scots was accounted a great beauty. She was also not known for killing "rows and rows" of people, although her husband, Darnley, was mixed up in a murder, and her lover and third husband, Lord Bothwell, was thought to have arranged the murder of Darnley.

"Another is that it refers to Mary I of England and her unpopular attempts to bring Roman Catholicism back to England, identifying the "cockle shells," for example, with the symbol of pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James in Spain (Santiago de Compostela) and the "pretty maids all in a row" with nuns.

"These explanations range; it is generally thought to be about Mary I for roughly the same reasons as her Scottish counterpart, as her husband Phillip II of Spain was barely interested in her (hence the word "cockleshells"), the "How does your garden grow?" being a mockery of her womb (and her inability to produce heirs) or the idea many had taken that England had became a Catholic vassal or "branch" of Spain and the Habsburgs. "Quite contrary" seems to be a reference to the way she unsuccessfully tried to undo what her father Henry VIII and brother Edward VI had done with the church. The "pretty maids all in a row" could be another reference to her miscarriages as with the other Mary or her execution of Lady Jane Grey after coming to the throne. "Rows and rows" is attributed to her infamous burnings and executions of Protestants.

"Alternatively, capitalising on the queen's portrayal by Whig historians as 'Bloody Mary', the "silver bells and cockle shells" referred to in the nursery rhyme could be colloquialisms for instruments of torture. The 'silver bells' may refer to thumbscrews, while the 'cockleshells' are thought to have been instruments of torture which were attached to the genitals. Finally, 'maids' might be a reference to 'maidens' which were early guillotine-like devices used to sever heads."

"Still, some argue that no proof has been found that the rhyme was known before the eighteenth century, while Mary I of England and Mary I of Scotland (who were contemporaries) lived in the sixteenth century."

But even if the rhyme came about long after the two Marys, that doesn't it couldn't be about them. Think of all the historical romances or the films, Mary, Queen of Scots, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson, and Elizabeth, directed by the Indian Shekhar Kapur.

In fact, the Wikipedia article concludes:

"Some historians claim the song was invented by the Protestants and Anglicans any time during or long after to mock Mary I of England's unsuccessful reign, or even both Marys."

But if the rhyme is about Mary Queen of Scots or Mary I aka Bloody Mary, why should it be so cryptic if composed long after their death? They were dead, gone, not likely to imprison, pillory, burn or behead or whatever they did to their critics.

Who knows? Meanwhile, I am reminded of another Mary -- a Mary one can rock to, to the beat of the Monkees. So, here's a song I love -- Mary, Mary by the Monkees.

Man U and my son

2006-12-07T22:44:00.000+08:00

I am so glad Manchester United won their Champions League match against Benfica. My son must be awfully pleased. He must have followed the second half of the game on his computer after classes.

He was very disappointed when Man U lost to Benfica last year and failed to qualify for the playoffs. He told us last night he couldn't see that match last year because he had classes and wasn't going to miss out this time again. He sounded all keyed up as he chatted online with my wife in Calcutta (Kolkata) and me.

The English soccer clubs are hugely popular here in Singapore and now they can be watched on television in India too. That's how my son became a Man U fan, having seen them on television during his school days in Calcutta (Kolkata).

I am surprised he follows them religiously even now. In his college in America, he can't watch the English Premier League or the Champions League on television. So he follows the games on the Internet.

Having grown up in India, of course, his biggest love is cricket. He is a big fan of Sachin Tendulkar and catches every webcast he can when his hero is in action. He may miss the rest of the Indian innings, but while Tendulkar is at the crease, he will be glued to the live commentary. He must have inherited his passion for sports from his Dadu (grandfather).

Now he follows American football too. He may not watch every baseball telecast but football, oh yes, he will. It's the most unpredictable of games, he said, and almost as complicated as chess. He even went to another college to cheer his college team. It was a big game, he said and went along with his friends.

Apparently, football is the biggest sport in his college. Surprisingly, they are not big on basketball. I thought the NBA was a big thing in America. Even Singapore newspapers cover the NBA, but my son doesn't care for it at all.

Revolution

2006-12-07T04:04:00.001+08:00

Revolution was the B-side of one of the Beatles' greatest hits, Hey Jude, released in 1968. I love Hey Jude even more, but John Lennon really puts his heart into Revolution in this performance. Paul's also in great form. And look at Ringo grinning away! And George too!

Get back

2006-12-07T03:58:00.000+08:00

I have been meaning to post this clip of the Beatles' rooftop concert at their Apple headquarters in London in January 1969 ever since I saw it on YouTube. It reminds me of my schooldays. A great song and a memorable performance, it's a flashback to a time when the world had not heard of yuppies, downsizing, rationalisation and all the corporate gobbledygook that have crept in since the 1980s. Actually, the first nail in the coffin was dug when the economist Milton Friedman won the Nobel prize in 1976. And then Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979 and Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981. And the world hasn't been the same again. Here's to the good old days. Get Back!

Singaporeans almost as rich as Americans and Japanese

2006-12-06T17:56:00.000+08:00

The US, Britain and Japan are three of the world's richest countries. The US has a per capita wealth of $143,727, according to a United Nations survey based on data from the year 2000. But Singapore is not far behind with a personal per capita wealth of $113,631. In fact, Singapore ranked sixth among the 18 countries for which complete houshold balance sheets were available, right behind the Netherlands (fourth) with a per capita wealth of at $120,086 and Italy (fifth) with $119,704.

In comparison, Australia has a per capita wealth of $90,906, Canada, $89,252, China $11,267, Taiwan $100,009, Denmark $66,191, Finland $38,754, France $93,729, Germany $89,871, India $6,513, Indonesia $7,973, New Zealand $55,823, Poland $24,654, South Africa $16,266, Spain $92,253, Portugal $53,357 and the Czech Republic 32,431. (Not all these countries' complete houshold balance sheets were available.)

There is greater concentration of wealth in the US, home to 37 per cent of the world's richest individuals, than in Japan, which accounts for 27 per cent. I did not come across corresponding figures for Singapore. Still, the survey makes interesting reading.

According to the survey, the world's richest 2 per cent of the adults own more than half of all household wealth. Anyone who wants to see the complete survey can download the PDF file from the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research website.

Citizens and permanent residents

2006-12-05T12:17:00.000+08:00

Singapore's permanent residents will have to pay more for education and health care than the citizens of this tiny city state. Such discrimination may not be unjustified. Citizens should come first. And permanent residents have the option to become citizens too.

The government welcomes foreigners to make Singapore their home. It wants the population to grow from nearly 4.5 million now to six to seven million by 2030. The newspaper Today says: "This move could actually nudge some of them (permanent residents) into taking up Singapore citizenship." Yes, but not all.

Some may take time to make up their minds for two reasons.

One, Singapore does not allow dual citizenship -- unlike the USA, Britain or even India today. There may be permanent residents who have made Singapore their home, whose children speak and think like Singaporeans, but who still have property and other connections back in their home countries which they want to preserve.

And, secondly, though everyone speaks English in Singapore, where English is one of the four official languages, Singapore is, according to Wikipedia, "one of the largest Chinese cities outside China", with Chinese Singaporeans making up 76.8 per cent of the population. Jobs are easier to find for people who speak Chinese. That's only natural in a country with a large Chinese-speaking population where much of the trade is with Southeast Asia -- where ethnic Chinese play a key part in the economy -- and with China. And as the Chinese economy grows, so will the need for Chinese speakers. Unfortunately, Chinese is not an easy language to learn.

Singapore is a peaceful, prosperous, good place to live in with good government and excellent infrastructure. People who come here are likely to stay unless they get even better opportunities elsewhere or have to return home for various reasons. But one result of living under a government that thinks long term is an awareness that nothing is permanent. Situations change. Those who decide to settle here no doubt think long term too.

How does Bush compare with Carter?

2006-12-05T03:07:00.000+08:00

Rumsfeld is gone. Now John Bolton is stepping down as US ambassador to the United Nations. With two years to go till the next presidential election, George W Bush is already beginning to look like a lame duck. The Democratic victory in the midterm elections has clipped his wings. No longer can he ignore the critics and keep his appointees in power.

By common consent, the most ineffective US presidents in the last 100 years must be Herbert Hoover and, no matter how good and well-meaning, Jimmy Carter. Is Bush about to join their ranks? Carter's failure was to project US power effectively. The same might be said of Bush. In fact, he has made a far bigger mess than Carter. The Iran hostage crisis pales in comparison with the Iraq war. It's nothing less than Bush's Vietnam. The only difference is Lyndon B Johnson inherited the Vietnam war from John F Kennedy; the Iraq war was Bush's own initiative.

He has not only failed to restore order in Iraq but exposed the limitations of US power. He has strained relations with European allies and is wasting manpower and resources in endless fighting in the Middle East when the USA is already heavily overburdened with debt. Meanwhile, China has made inroads in Latin America where leftist governments are coming to power. US influence is no longer unchallenged in Latin America. And it's all happening during Bush's watch.

I am not anti-Bush. He is a devout family man. He may genuinely want democracy in Iraq. And someone has to fight terrorism. It's also to his credit that he has reached out beyond the Western alliance to look for new partners and build closer links with countries like India.

But there's no denying the growing Chinese power, the situation in Latin America and the mess in Iraq.

It makes one wonder about Bush's place in history. He is not about to be forgotten like all those presidents who occupied the White House between the 1840s and the 1890s. With the exception of Abraham Lincoln, they are hardly talked about today. How often does one hear of John Tyler (1841-45), Millard Fillmore (1850-53), Franklin Pierce (1853-57), Andrew Johnson (1865-69) or Chester Allan Arthur (1881-85)? Bush will continue to be talked about and written about after he leaves the White House. But let's hope he won't be remembered for all the wrong reasons like Ulysses S Grant.

The terms of those little remembered presidents I got from Answers.com.

Workfare in Singapore

2006-12-04T12:06:00.000+08:00

Singapore seems to be finally embracing a social welfare system. "Workfare to be fixed part of social safety net," reports The Straits Times today. "Help scheme for low-income will be reviewed, adjusted but here to stay". The government does subsidise public housing, health care and education but has opposed the Western social welfare system so far. Now that is about to change.

The Workfare bonus for low-income workers will become a permanent feature of Singapore's social safety net, starting with a three-year run, reports The Straits Times.

"For every dollar you earn through your own efforts the government will give you something to match," said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at a conference of the ruling People's Action Party yesterday.

The government assistance will be partly in cash, but most of it will go into people's provident funds, health care and "retirement", reported The Straits Times. Typically, the newspaper didn't spell out the difference between the provident fund and "retirement" -- the fund is meant to help retirees though it can be used for other purposes. But had it explained the difference, it wouldn't be The Straits Times.

Workfare is not a new concept. It's another form of welfare.

The Wikipedia says: "Workfare is an alternative model to conventional social welfare systems. Traditional welfare benefits are available with little required of the recipient, save their continued search for employment, if that. Under workfare, recipients have to meet certain participation requirements to continue to receive their welfare benefits. These requirements are often a combination of activities that are intended to improve the recipient's job prospects (such as training, rehabilitation and work experience) and those designated as contributing to society (such as unpaid or underpaid work). These programs, now common in the United States, Australia and Canada have generated considerable debate and controversy.

"The purported main goal of workfare is to generate a 'net contribution' to society from welfare recipients. Most commonly, this means getting unemployed people into paid work, reducing or eliminating welfare payments to them and creating an income that generates taxes. Furthermore, it is argued that once a person has recent employment experience, even at entry level, they are better able to obtain gainful, long term employment. Forcing people into employment or employment-like situations also aims to break the cycle of poverty where... welfare dependence -- it is claimed -- can become a way of life."

The Wikipedia adds: "Critics argue that there are many flaws and that many of the likely consequences outweigh the expected benefits.

"One main argument is that workfare tends to generate prospective employees who lack basic literacy or numeracy skills and are mostly unemployable outside the so-called McJob industries."

"The social consequences of the burdens of a workfare system are another focus of criticism. As discussed in the 2002 Michael Moore documentary film Bowling for Columbine, work requirements for welfare funds can put a strain on families with young children, especially when the families are headed by single mothers. It could also be argued that people with inherent disadvantages to finding employment (such as a disability, a speech impediment, or being of an ethnic minority) are unfairly punished for issues beyond their control."

In Singapore, however, where there are no unemployment benefits, people have to work anyway. So Workfare will be a bonus. However, one must work to get it.

The new system is being introduced when the Goods and Services Tax -- the sales tax -- is about to go up from 5 per cent to 7 per cent, which is likely to raise the cost of living.

Get Vox this weekend!

2006-12-02T16:07:00.000+08:00

Anyone who wants to blog and has time to spare this weekend should register for Vox. It's really cool. So what if you already have a blog? This one has features you could link to your blog. See "See My Photos" in the sidebar? It's a feed from my Vox blog, which I just created. Sure, I have an even snazzier link to Flickr using its cool, distinctive badge. And there are other ways to integrate audio in a blog using a music player like StreamPad or Pandora. But why not upload the good stuff on Vox where you can blog at the same time and control who sees your posts?

That's another great feature of Vox. Not only can you have separate feeds for audios, videos, photos and posts. You can also control the "privacy settings" on Vox. You decide which of your posts, photos, videos and audios should be private, accessible only to your family and friends, and which should be public, open to anyone browsing the web.

And posting, uploading, on Vox is a breeze. Posts can be re-edited and published on the web as easily and quickly as on WordPress.

Vox also offers plenty of designs for your blog. You can change the appearance of your blog in a minute. Changing the design takes no time at all. You can also show off your collection of books.

You can also cross-post to TypePad and LiveJournal. If you enable cross-posting and post on Vox and check the cross-post box, a summary of your post will appear on your TypePad blog or LiveJournal with a link to your Vox post.

Now that's one feature which possibly works even better on another blogging platform called Multiply which I read about in TechCrunch. Anything posted on Multiply can be cross-posted in full to TypePad and Blogger. Multiply also has privacy settings. But Vox is cool. Check it out. Register now and wait for the invitation email to pop up in your mailbox that will let you start blogging on this hip, new creation of Ben and Mena Trott and all the good people at Six Apart.

Ganguly's back, now Chappell get out!

2006-12-02T03:28:00.000+08:00

Yoohoo, Sourav Ganguly has been recalled to the Indian cricket team! As The Telegraph reports, it's a "debacle" for India's cricket coach, Greg Chappell.

A year ago, I wrote the Chappie should be fired after he gave the finger to Indian cricket fans in Calcutta (Kolkata) who were protesting against the local hero, Ganguly, being dropped from the team after a spat with him.

I wonder how the abominable Aussie had the gall to insult the fans even after the Indian team lost that match.

Maybe the Chappie knew the Indian cricket control board would take no action against him. He was right. He continues to coach the Indian team despite its disgraceful performance under him.

Now the Indians have finally been hammered in South Africa, skittled out for 91 runs -- 91 runs in a one-day international! -- the Indian team selectors have finally caved in to public pressure and recalled Ganguly for the Test matches against South Africa starting this month.

It's true Ganguly was in poor form as a batsman when he was dropped from the team. But he has an excellent record as the team captain. He led India to the 2003 World Cup finals and holds the Indian record for the most number of Test victories as the team captain from 2000 to 2005. He has scored more than 5,000 runs in Tests and more than 10,000 in one-day internationals. And a man with a record like that was dropped on the insistence of a foreign coach who had just taken charge of the team!

Chappell and his brother, Ian, who was the Australian cricket captain, were infamous for their unsporting behaviour. He should have never been appointed India's cricket coach in the first place. He has merely sown dissension in the team, led it into a bad patch and nearly succeeded in wrecking Ganguly's career.

And he even insulted Indian members of parliament. When questions were raised in parliament about India's poor performance in South Africa, he remarked, "“I’m not surprised. They (MPs) are paid to do so in Parliament." At least, he had the good sense to avoid the B-word: bribed.

Actually, this abominable Aussie can be crafty too.

He was infamously involved in an underarm bowling incident in a New Zealand-Australia one-day international in 1981. His brother, Ian, ordered him to bowl underarm, thus ensuring Australia would win the match and avoid a tie. Their unsporting behaviour caused an outcry. Both brothers later expressed regret and embarrassment. But maybe that was just for public consumption. Mean Greg, the abominable Aussie, continues to make mischief in India. And he gets away with it, even now.

Even after the debacle in South Africa -- and the recall of Ganguly -- India's chief selector, Dilip Vengsarkar, denied that Chappell's performance as coach was under scrutiny. ""He has been appointed till the World Cup (next year). The players have to perform. He can plan, strategies and coach. But can't go out and play," said Vengsarkar, absolving the coach of all responsibility for the team's poor performance. Why have a coach at all, then, if he can't improve the team?

The abominable Aussie will, no doubt, be happy to keep his job. After all, he shows no sign of leaving. Why should he walk away from a job that pays him about $175,000 a year? Not only is the Chappie getting paid good money; he can also insult the "natives", who seem to be turning the other cheek to the "sahib".

Yes, the Chappie was brought in last year on a two-year contract to coach the Indian team till the World Cup in West Indies next year. But surely, the contract can be terminated. The Indian cricket control board surely makes enough money from match receipts and television rights in cricket-crazy India to pay compensation to the Chappie.

Mike Selvey, writing in the Guardian, says: "Knowing Greg, I suspect he would welcome Ganguly if he demonstrates form, fitness and commitment."

Oh yes, he will certainly grin and bear it. The Chappie's got no choice if he wants to keep his job. If he doesn't quit now even after the return of Ganguly, whom he dropped from the team, we will know he can be not only rude and insulting but is quite thick-skinned too.

I, of course, write as a Bengali from Calcutta. Naturally, I am delighted that Ganguly, also a Bengali from Calcutta, has finally got the better of the abominable Aussie.

Singapore civil service pay hike likely

2006-12-01T20:07:00.000+08:00

Singapore government workers have reason to cheer -- and not just because the coming sales tax hike, from 5 percent to 7 percent, is meant to help the poor as well as the middle-income group. The salaries of more than 60,000 civil servants in Singapore are expected to go up next year to stay competitive as private sector wages rise, said Defence Minister and Minister in charge of Civil Service Teo Chee Hean. Private sector wages have gone up by 3.5 percent on average, according to Channel NewsAsia.

Asked whether ministers also would be paid more, the minister said: "We have to look at the benchmark to see where they are to decide what kind of adjustments we need to make. The benchmarks are basically to keep up with the private sector."

In other words, Singapore ministers like civil servants have to be paid as much as their private sector counterparts.

Channel NewsAsia reported: "Currently, ministerial pay is pegged to the salaries of the top earners in six chosen professions. It is set at two-thirds the median income of the top eight earners in each of these six professions or the pay of the individual at the mid-point of that list."

A Google search did not turn up any mainstream media site showing how much a Singapore minister is paid today.

But the South China Morning Post reported in 2003 that "the prime minister earns a reported gross salary of S$1,030,000 a year, and that is before the variable component is taken into account".

One Singapore dollar is worth about 65 cents.

The South China Morning Post added: "The Singapore pay rate compares favourably with that received by United States President George W. Bush, (US$400,000 per year), and Britain's Tony Blair (US$262,000). They also leave in the shade the remuneration reportedly received by Thailand's Thaksin Shinawatra (US$32,000) and Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad (US$65,000)."

The US vice-president is paid $208,100 while Senators and Congressmen get $162,100 a year, according to infoplease. The US Supreme Court Chief Justice is paid $208,100 and his colleagues $199,200 and $208,100, it adds.

A sales tax hike to help the people

2006-12-01T18:51:00.000+08:00

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) in Singapore is going to go up from 5 percent to 7 percent -- and it's going to help the poor. Wait a minute now, this is a sales tax, an indirect tax, which has to be paid by the rich and the poor alike unlike the income tax, which exempts the poor and goes up with the income bracket -- the more you earn, the more you pay.

So how can a sales tax hike help the poor?

It can in Singapore. The GST hike, which will net another 1.5 billion Singapore dollars (almost a billion dollars) in government revenue annually, will be used to help the poor and further improve the city-state's already excellent infrastructure. Singapore has no social security but offers various subsidies for public housing, health and education, etc.

But a higher sales tax means prices will go up -- for food and other daily necessities. How does that help the poor? People will have to wait and see. The government will spell out how it's going to help the people on February 15 when it will announce next year's budget.

And it will help not only the poor but the middle-income group too, Education Minister and Second Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugratnam said yesterday.

People can't wait for the new measures to be announced, according to The Straits Times, which called them a "much-anticipated package".

All the government is prepared to say now is, there won't be any increase in public carpark fees, radio and TV licence fees, passport and birth certificate fees and conservancy charges for a year. And the GST for school fees and health care for subsidised patients will continue to be absorbed "for good", reported The Straits Times, quoting the Finance Ministry.

Google Guide's really useful

2006-11-27T11:52:00.000+08:00

I just blogged about Google's shortcomings, but still it's the search engine we use most often. So I was pleasantly surprised when I came across Google Guide the other day.

The website run by Nancy Blachman carries the disclaimer, "Google Guide is neither affiliated with nor endorsed by Google".

But I found it extremely useful, providing handy tips on how to get the best out of Google search. One may get the same tips in various books and Google itself offers pointers if one clicks under Advanced Search on the Google search page. But Google Guide is more friendly to dummies like me. It has tips for novices and experienced users as well. There's also a cheat sheet as well as several printable PDF guides running from as few as two pages (general summary) to 150 pages. Wow!

Google isn't always right

2006-11-27T10:54:00.000+08:00

Google's success is built upon its Page Rank system of searching, but it may not always deliver the right answer. The first few search results may be misleading. So I found yesterday. I was writing something where I used the phrase, "The devil's in the detail". And then I wondered whether it should be "The devil's in the details". Being online, I checked the Free Dictionary. Curiously, the words weren't there. So I checked Google. It immediately linked to pages containing the words, "The devil's in the details." No cigar. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, it should be "the devil's in the detail".

Maybe, I would have found the right phrase on Google too if I had continued my search. I looked only at the first search results page. But isn't that what a good search engine supposed to deliver: The right answer immediately?

Google, of course, relies on collective wisdom, the wisdom of the masses. But that's not always very useful. We need other ways of searching too.

Komala Vilas II

2006-11-26T12:46:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

Another picture of Komala Vilas, the popular South Indian restaurant on Serangoon Road in Little India. This is where my wife and I used to go to eat iddly and thosai and vada when we first came to Singapore. Now I am more likely to buy sweets from the tuckshop in the corner separated from the main restaurant by a jewellery store. We still visit the restaurant when my wife is in town.

Komala Vilas

2006-11-26T12:39:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

Komala Vilas on Serangoon Road is one of the oldest and most popular Indian restaurants in Singapore. I remember there was a Kamala Vilas in Calcutta (Kolkata). That was a South Indian restaurant, too, serving the same vegetarian fare as Komala Vilas in Singapore.

Campbell Lane

2006-11-26T12:32:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

Campbell Lane, a little lane between Serangoon Road -- the Little India thoroughfare -- and North Bridge Road. The rosy-topped big buiding in the distance is Sim Lim Tower, where one can shop for electronics accessories, on North Bridge Road.

Campbell Lane, Clive Street

2006-11-26T12:14:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

These little lanes in Singapore's Little India are like flashbacks to the past. Even the street names evoke nostalgia. It's interesting that Clive Street in Singapore is only a dingy little lane while in Calcutta (Kolkata) that was the name of a major commercial artery. But then Robert Clive never visited Singapore, which was founded by Stamford Raffles in 1819, more than 60 years after Clive conquered Bengal, in 1757, and made Calcutta -- or what used to Fort William -- his capital. Clive, who was later elected to the British Parliament and had to fight corruption charges, committed suicide in 1774. Now, of course, Clive Street in Calcutta is called Netaji Subhas Bose Road, after the freedom fighter Subhas Bose, who visited Singapore when he raised the Indian National Army to fight against the British during World War II.

Entering Buffalo Road II

2006-11-25T13:34:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

Another picture of Buffalo Road. In the background behind the van and the trees is an entrance to the Little India MRT station proclaiming its presence with green signs. The station entrance stands at the intersection of Buffalo Road and a short narrow lane leading to Tekka Market and Serangoon Road. The cars parked across the station entrance are outside the market building.

Entering Buffalo Road

2006-11-25T13:24:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

It really rained on my parade yesterday. I was free and wanted to go about taking pictures. But the louring clouds that greeted me on Buffalo Road sent me scuttling home after a quick trip to the Veera Kaliamman Temple in Little India. By the time the skies cleared, I was in mouse potato mode, surfing the Net and in no mood to go out again.

This picture was taken on Buffalo Road on my way to the temple. I like the long gentle arc of the road framed by the horizon and the creamy white blocks in the distance. Behind that green thing on the crossroads is an entrance to the Little India MRT station.

mr brown on the BBC

2006-11-25T03:30:00.000+08:00

I heard mr brown on the BBC yesterday and wanted to hear the programme again. After all, he is Singapore's most popular blogger and podcaster, and with good reason too. He is funny and irreverent, unlike the mainstream media. Not that I have heard his podcasts before, being more partial to blogs. But he sounded good on the BBC, and so I searched for the programme again on the Internet. A Google search led me to his blog where he linked to the programme.

And I really enjoyed listening to the BBC programme again where mr brown is introduced as a "cutting-edge podcaster from Singapore". He covers the "dysfunctional aspect of life in Singapore", he says in his podcasts, which according to him have an average audience of 20,000 but sometimes reach 100,000 or more.

On his podcasts, he says, "We speak a very colloquial version of English called Singlish which is very, very frowned upon by the Government or the Gahmen as they are called here. The Gahmen -- g-a-h-m-e-n. So the Gahmen are not happy with Singlish. You are not allowed to speak in Singlish because it's broken English, and if you speak the broken English on the national radio or the TV, then all the little children would hear this English and society would collapse."

The programme is not just about mr brown. It also presents a film-maker from Shanghai, a photographer cum performance artist from Iceland and vodcasters Jerry and Orrin Zucker with "a Woody Allen sense of humour" from Boston. It's the second part of a programme called Citizen Creators Online and talks about how the Internet has unleashed a new wave of creativity which is changing ideas about art. Charles Gere, who lectures on new media at Lancaster University in Britain, says: "We will cease to have Leonardo da Vincis or even Andy Warhols or Jackson Pollocks and instead we will have a much more widely spread, diffused notion of creativity..."

It's an excellent, thought-provoking programme which made the Internet sound as exciting as the history of rock music in Charlie Gillette's ground-breaking book, The Sound of the City, published way back in 1970. Anyone who wants to download the programme should do so now. For it's part of the BBC arts programme, Close Up, which the BBC website says is updated every Friday.

Three cheers for my wife's college

2006-11-24T23:55:00.000+08:00

Hurrah, my wife's college in Calcutta (Kolkata) achieved excellent results in the BA Part I examinations, her department came out on top. The results came out today and she told me just now when we spoke on the phone. She sounded so happy.

I am so proud of her and her girls. She is a great teacher, passionate and dedicated. Now that our son is in college in America, and since I am in Singapore, she spends even more time on her college activities.

She has always been devoted to her college, having studied there herself. She was offered a job at a government college, but she passed that up to remain at her alma mater.

Bus glimpsed through trees

2006-11-24T22:45:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

And the rails glimmering on the left guard the elevated railway tracks of the Singapore MRT system. The picture was taken from a pedestrian bridge.

Roadside flowers

2006-11-24T22:19:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

I love the way the roads in Singapore are lined with trees, shrubs and flowers.

Thanksgiving

2006-11-24T21:47:00.000+08:00

My son is enjoying a short break because it was Thanksgiving yesterday. Almost everyone in his college has gone home. But he is staying on campus like a few other international students. They had a Thanksgiving dinner themselves.

He decided to remain in college because he has some work to do, he said. And, besides, he can sleep late and do what he wants to do in his own sweet time.

One hears that college life can be pretty relaxed in America. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not that our son says so, but from the hints he drops about the tests he has to take and the work he has to do, there's quite a lot of pressure. My wife said as much after the two of us chatted online with him last night.

We hope to chat with him again tonight. She is Calcutta (Kolkata), he is in America, I am in Singapore. What a life. But he will be going to Calcutta next month for his winter holidays. She is looking forward to that. She was telling me how much she misses him after having spent all her life with him until he went to college last year.

Passing train

2006-11-21T01:13:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

A train rolling up the gradient after leaving Bishan MRT station. This is where the elevated tracks begin on the North Line running from Jurong East through Yishun to Marina Bay. All the stations south of Bishan up to Marina Bay are underground.

Train coming

2006-11-21T01:04:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

A train on elevated tracks approaching Bishan MRT station, the last above-ground station on the North Line running from Jurong East through Yishun to Marina Bay. After Bishan, the tracks run underground.

Novena Church

2006-11-18T19:17:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

People coming out of Novena Church on Thomson Road today. The Saturday novenas at this church are always well attended.

A boat goes by

2006-11-18T19:00:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

I walked across the Cavenagh Bridge to get this view of Boat Quay. The Singapore River looks wide here, but actually it takes only a short walk across the pedestrian bridge to get to the other side.

Tourist at Boat Quay

2006-11-18T18:43:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

This is why my wife loves visiting Raffles Place. We would get off the train at the Raffles Place MRT station, take a few pictures outside the station and head for the riverside. It takes less than five minutes to walk to the Singapore River embankment. Boat Quay, I think, it's called. Of course, it's a tourist attraction.

Tourists at Raffles Place

2006-11-18T18:30:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

Busy, commercial Raffles Place is also a tourist attraction. My wife and I also love taking pictures there. Whenever she is in Singapore, we go there with our camera.

Today newspaper at Raffles Place

2006-11-18T18:22:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

I was at Raffles Place during lunch hour yesterday when the freesheet Today was being given away outside the Raffles Place underground MRT station.

Is this her?

2006-11-12T10:56:00.000+08:00

Just because I don't read The Straits Times every day doesn't mean I have a poor opinion of it. Though it can be boring, it has certain standards. So I was taken aback by this frontpage headline on The Sunday Times -- its sister paper -- today: "Is this her?"

Er, shouldn't it be "she"? I wondered looking at the pretty woman -- a Mongolian model killed in Kuala Lumpur.

But my English is not up to The Straits Times' standards. So I went online and checked a couple of dictionaries at home.

After all, it's more natural to say, "It's me" or "It's him" instead of "It's I" or "It's he". So why was it jarring to read, "Is this her?"

It's perfectly okay, according to Dr Grammar, who quoted:

"Patricia O'Conner, author of Woe Is I, says, 'It's OK to use It is me, It's her, and similar constructions, instead of the technically correct but stuffier It is I, That's he, and It's she.' "

But the expression sounded strange to me because it was so ambiguous.

The headline, "Is this her?", made me wonder: "Is this her what?"

There's a difference between "him" and "her". "Him" and "me" are both pronouns. "Her" is not only a pronoun but a determiner too. So if anyone asks, "Is this her?", one may be excused for wondering if the question is about a woman or something pertaining to her.

No such misunderstanding is possible in the case of "him" and "me", which can never be used as possessives.

The misunderstanding could be avoided in the case of the woman, too, by using the grammatically correct "Is this she?"

But, no, The Sunday Times didn't want to be correct; it wanted to be noticed. That it was.

Do we need a daily newspaper?

2006-11-12T04:45:00.000+08:00

Writing in the sixth anniversary issue of Today this weekend, PN Balji says: "Six years ago we knew the competition." That was when Today was started as an alternative to Singapore's main newspaper, The Straits Times. But The Straits Times' publishers, Singapore Press Holdings, have since bought a stake in the freesheet, Today. "Now, we don't know what it (the competition) looks like," says Balji. "It could be blogs, podcasts, emails, SMSes and even lifestyle changes that demand narrowcasting or a combination of all these." He is right.

I was surprised when I read last month that The Straits Times had gained 30,000 new readers this year. It crowed it was gaining readers when newspapers elsewhere were losing them.

But there's no alternative to The Straits Times if one wants to read an English newspaper in Singapore. The New Paper is too downmarket, the Business Times mainly business, and the freesheet Today available only at selected spots at certain hours. And they are all linked to Singapore Press Holdings.

The Straits Times' gains are due to one simple reason. More Singaporeans are switching over from Chinese newspapers, which are also published by the same group. The Straits Times itself said so.

It could also be due to the rise in the number of foreigners living and working in Singapore. Indians, for example, have a newspaper reading habit -- and what else can they read in Singapore but The Straits Times?

My wife, when she visits Singapore, checks The Straits Times for the shopping coupons and ads. But when she is not here, there are days when my copy of the paper remains unread.

I can't stop subscribing to The Straits Times because one has to look it up sometimes for official news, about new laws and policies.

But it's not something I read for pleasure.

For that I depend on the Internet, where I can read the Guardian and The Times and the New York Times. Even many of the blogs are more interesting to read. And from time to time, I look up The Telegraph, published from my hometown Calcutta (Kolkata), and other Indian newspapers.

Coming from India, naturally I am interested in Indian news. And I got into the habit of reading British and American periodicals back in Calcutta where I could read them at the British Council and the American Center. Selected articles from The Times and the New York Times also used to appear in the local newspapers. I still enjoy reading all that.

Maybe I would have enjoyed reading The Straits Times, too, if I had seen it since my schooldays. But I didn't. So it's still not part of my daily reading.

But one doesn't have to start young to like something. I had never read The Economist or Wired magazine when I was young. So why do I like them?

North Bridge Road on a rainy afternoon 2

2006-11-11T22:16:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

I took this picture, too, this afternoon as I walked from the City Hall subway station to the IT Mall at Funan Centre. I can't recall if I ever walked down these stairs to the underground food court, though.

North Bridge Road on a rainy afternoon

2006-11-11T21:49:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

I went to Funan Centre on North Bridge Road this afternoon. It was raining when I got off the train at the City Hall MRT station. I snapped this picture as I walked to the IT Mall at Funan Centre. The Adelphi building across the street has an excellent location, at one of the busiest intersections of Singapore. But I have visited it only a couple of times when someone back home in Calcutta (Kolkata) asked me to inquire there for some high-end audio equipment.

My wife meets a boy who reminds her of our son

2006-11-09T18:56:00.000+08:00

After chatting with our son online last night, my wife told me about an experience she had earlier in the day.

She was returning home after visiting her ailing father at her sister's place when she met a boy on the bus who reminded her of our son.

The boy looked and behaved just like our son, giving up his seat to a woman, she said.

She asked the boy which school he went to. He named a school close to our home in Calcutta (Kolkata). He even knew the neighbourhood where we live. He was returning home, he added, after attending a coaching class where our son also went for a short time.

My wife liked him so much that I asked her why she didn't invite him to visit her.

She couldn't, she said, breaking into tears. Her voice choked up.

I didn't know how much she missed our son, she said.

I wouldn't know, for much as I miss my son, it was she who raised him. While I have been working in Singapore, they were together all these years in Calcutta until he went to college in America last year.

I miss my wife and my son. Yet, when I had to give up my job recently, I looked for and found another job in Singapore. My wife also urged me to continue working in Singapore. We need the money. And, besides, it wouldn't have been easy for me getting a job in Calcutta either. But I dream of the day when we will be together again. That's what keeps me going.

Today, I was reconfiguring my screensaver, using pictures of my wife and my son. Looking at them made me feel just like my wife felt when she met that boy who reminded her of our son. How I miss them.

Near Serangoon Central

2006-11-06T11:58:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

I visited a friend yesterday and had to cross this road.

Takeoff

2006-11-06T11:52:00.001+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

Singapore's Changi Airport runway seen from the Terminal 1 viewing gallery.

Before takeoff

2006-11-06T11:26:00.000+08:00

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Originally uploaded by rana2u.

A Cathay Pacific airliner loads up before takeoff from Singapore's Changi airport.

Out of work: A fresh start

2006-11-05T08:37:00.000+08:00

My mother-in-law was thinking of us all as she lay in intensive care in hospital in Calcutta (Kolkata). "Tell him not to worry," she said about me to my wife. "He will get another job." Indeed, just minutes after I heard about her death, I received another phone call which led to a new job in Singapore. An HR officer called me for an interview on my cell phone while I was trying to console my wife in Calcutta on my home phone. The officer, on hearing about our loss, kindly agreed to interview me before I left for the funeral. I went to Calcutta, knowing there would be a job for me when I returned to Singapore. My wife, who loved her mother deeply, joked the first thing her mother did on going to heaven was to get another job for me.

The joke hid a lot of sorrow. We have been having a very hard time. I didn't write about it at the time because we didn't want our son to know. He is in college in America. We were planning to tell him when he comes home for his December holidays -- not while he was in college where there would be no one to console him. Though he doesn 't read my blog, he knows the URL. So I didn't write about his grandma's illness and death and my problems at work. But his "Dadu" -- grandpa -- who is partially paralysed inadvertently told him I had to leave my previous job and make a fresh start when he called him from his college after hearing about "Didu's" (grandmother's) death. My previous post describes how he learnt about her death.

It all happened almost at the same time. I had to accept voluntary retirement at the end of August. And my mother-in-law was admitted to hospital in September.

It was a terrible time. My wife said there was no need for me to go to Calcutta; she and her sister and her brother-in-law would visit their mother in hospital and talk to the doctors while I looked for a job in Singapore. But a job isn't easy to get for someone like me. I am in my early 50s and not highly qualified. Nor do I have a huge circle of friends and acquaintances. I prefer to come home after work, read and write and surf the Internet -- and visit the library on my days off.

But I had no choice when offered a golden handshake. It was made clear to me I might get nothing at all if I didn't take up the offer and was forced to leave later.

My wife was most supportive. She said I should accept the offer and look for another job. But that was easier said than done. I felt so bad and helpless as I prayed for another job in Singapore while she attended to her mother in Calcutta.

I am grateful I got another job. Not that I am out of the woods yet. There's still a lot of uncertainty. I have to acquire a new skill. And the pay is less. But at least I am not spending all my time at home. It's funny how attitudes change with circumstances. I used to look forward to my days off on my previous job. But after only two weeks at home, I wanted desperately to find another job and get back to work.

My son misses his "Didu"

2006-11-05T01:28:00.000+08:00

My son is devastated by his grandmother's death. He broke down when he heard the news. We didn't want to tell him. His "Didu" -- grandmother -- told us not to inform him when she was admitted to hospital in Calcutta (Kolkata) in September. She knew how deeply he would be affected and there would be no one to console him in his college in America. That's how much she loved him. Even in her agony, while she was fighting for her life in intensive care, she was thinking of him.

He had grown up with his "Didu" and "Dadu" -- grandfather -- and Mum-Mum. They had always lived together in Calcutta until he left for college last year. It was they who raised him while I was working in Singapore. And I couldn't have asked for a better son. They did everything they could for him. His "Didu" even deboned the fish for him because he wouldn't eat fish with bones in them. She would make what we Bengalis call fish "chops" - breaded fillets usually stuffed with mashed potatoes -- for him.

He got the news only after I returned to Singapore. He already suspected something was wrong when I went to Calcutta. And his suspicions deepened when he overheard his cousin -- my sister-in-law's daughter -- while speaking to his mum one day. She was at her sister's home making preparations for the funeral rites at the time. She was chatting with him on her niece's computer when the girl breathlessly whispered to her, "Didai" (her niece calls her "Didai") I didn't tell him what happened." My son overheard that and wanted to know what was wrong. He wanted to speak to his "Dadu" and "Didu". His mum then told him "Didu" couldn't come to the phone -- she was in hospital. He then wanted to call the hospital. He had to be told Didu was too weak to speak: she was in intensive care.

But one couldn't continue the charade forever. Our son got more and more anxious day by day. Every time we chatted online, he would ask his mum and me why he couldn't speak to Didu. He refused to believe us when we told him she was still in intensive care, unable to take phone calls. He began threatening to call the hospital.

Finally, he had to be told. He broke into heart-rending sobs. His mum called another Bengali boy from Calcutta in his college, asking him to console our son. He was inconsolable for several days. Every time we spoke to him, he sounded distraught. That was exactly what we had feared all along, and why we had not informed him earlier. We were planning to tell him on his next trip to Calcutta during his college holidays in December.

"Why didn't you tell me before?", he asked us angrily when he heard the news. And when he was told it was his "Didu" who asked us not to tell him, fearing he would be deeply upset, his next thought was for his "Dadu".

"Who's looking after Dadu?" he said. "It must be terrible for him. I will call him every day or every second day."

And he did start calling his "Dadu". Finally, mindful of the phone bills he was running up -- his "Dadu" couldn't chat with him on the computer -- his "Dadu" asked him to call only on weekends.

My wife was deeply moved. "I didn't know he was so concerned, so emotional," she said. "Usually, he's so cool." Well, what did she expect? He's a boy.

A death in the family

2006-11-04T23:37:00.000+08:00

My mother-in-law passed away. That's why I went to Calcutta (Kolkata) last month. I didn't mention what took me to Calcutta in my last post on October 3 for reasons that will become clear later in this post.

My wife is devastated at her mother's death and so is our son. They were both very close to her. She was a wonderful woman: gentle, kind, self-effacing. I have never heard her raise her voice in anger. She was in her 70s, and yet she continued cooking for the family until last year when she became partially paralysed.

She had always depended on her husband to take care of everything outside the kitchen, and a couple of years after he became partially paralysed , she too suffered the same fate.

My father-in-law became an invalid three years ago when he fell down while getting up from his bed in the darkness before dawn without switching on the light. He was already in his 70s then and had fallen down while alighting from a bus a few days earlier. The second fall proved too much. He broke his femur. The subsequent operation caused more complications, leaving him unable to walk on his own.

My mother-in-law began suffering from palsy two years ago and was confined to her bed last year. She and her husband moved to my sister-in-law's big house where maids could look after them. But they were unhappy having to move out of their little flat where my wife and her aunt continued to live. My wife often visited them and sometimes brought them home. She missed her parents, having lived with them almost all her life.

My father-in-law is naturally devastated. They had been married for more than 50 years and had always been inseparable.

My wife performed the last rites as the elder daughter. The last rites are normally performed by the son among us Hindus, but she has no brother. If there's no son, then the task usually falls on the nephew or the grandson. But my mother-in-law had no nephew and my son is in college in America.

My son didn't even know his grandmother was gone. She explicitly told us not to inform him when she was admitted to hospital in September. She was worried he would be upset and there would be no one to console him in America. That's how much she cared for us; even when she had to be admitted to hospital, she was thinking about her grandson.

That's why I didn't write about her illness and her death earlier. I didn't want my son to know. Not that he reads my blog, but he knows the URL.

Flying to Calcutta tonight

2006-10-03T12:57:00.001+08:00

I am flying to Calcutta (Kolkata) tonight. I will be away from Singapore for at least two weeks, spending time with my wife. We will miss our son, who is in college in America. We don't have a computer in Calcutta. So we won't be able to chat online with him. Nor will I be able to blog. I will miss that too. But at least my wife and I will be together. And our son said he would call.

Sorry Tharoor, Ban the man

2006-10-03T10:27:00.000+08:00

I have always admired Shashi Tharoor, who stood out even in his schooldays in my hometown, Calcutta (Kolkata), when he wrote a brilliant spoof of James Bond which was serialised in the now defunct Junior Statesman magazine. He has won awards as a writer and is said to have been a brilliant aide to Kofi Annan as UN undersecretary general for communications and public information. But I am not disappointed that he pulled out of the race to succeed Kofi Annan yesterday, after coming second in every Security Council ballot to choose the next United Nations secretary general.

Here's a link to Tharoor's webcast after bowing out of the race.

South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon won the latest ballot yesterday like all three previous rounds, so his election is almost certain.

And his election campaign will have done a power of good even if he fails to bring peace to the world like Kofi Annan.

South Korea has pledged millions of dollars in aid and offered other incentives to members of the United Nations Security Council to secure its candidate as the next UN secretary-general, reported The Times last week.

South Korea denied that it was using foreign aid as a means of buying votes in the Security Council, The Times added.

But even if South Korea used foreign aid to help a South Korean become UN chief, what's wrong with that? As long as the aid goes to the poor, I say that's the way to elect UN chiefs. No UN chief has ever succeeded in bringing peace to the world. This way at least there's some material benefit.

This, of course, means there can never be another Kofi Annan. People from poorer countries can never become UN chiefs if to be elected they have to offer inducements like foreign aid. But, frankly, it's a thankless job which only brings complications. Kofi Annan had problems with the Americans even if it was they who backed him for the job.

Will Ban Ki Moon be able to please all the five permanent Security Council members who now support him? One permanent Security Council member voted against Tharoor though reports are yet to say whether the veto came from the USA, Britain, France, Russia or China. One of them clearly doesn't want an Indian at the head of the UN.

Perhaps, the South Korean is less likely to ruffle feathers than his predecessor. All he has to do is keep his country's biggest trading partners happy. Some of the money could always be used to silence poorer nations with foreign aid.

What The Times said:

"Mr Ban announced his bid in February and has since been criss-crossing the
globe trying to win support. A month later South Korea announced that it would
treble its aid budget to Africa to $100 million by 2008. Seoul then contributed
tens of thousands of pounds to sponsor this year’s African Union summit in the
Gambia in July, when Mr Ban declared 2006 to be 'the Year of Africa' for South
Korea.

"One fortunate recipient was Tanzania, which currently has a seat on the
Security Council. When Mr Ban arrived in May he pledged $18 million for an
educational programme and also promised to carry out a road and bridge project
in western Tanzania. Between 1991 and 2003 South Korean grants to Tanzania
totalled $4.7 million. Seoul’s generosity seems to have worked. Elly Matango,
the Tanzanian Ambassador to Tokyo and Seoul, said that his Government had
decided to support Mr Ban.

"This month President Roh and Mr Ban headed the most senior South Korean
delegation since 1961 to visit Greece, another Security Council member. Overseen
by hundreds of South Korean businessmen, the countries signed agreements on
trade, tourism and maritime transport."

Remembering Gandhi on his birthday

2006-10-02T22:52:00.000+08:00

Today is the 137th birth anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. A Bollywood film featuring him has taken India by storm, proving his enduring appeal to Indians. He is as relevant as ever in India today.

Anyone who thinks he was backward-looking because he favoured rural development to urbanisation and industrialisation should think again.

Six out of 10 Indians still scratch a living from the soil and agriculture-related industries. Agriculture may account for only 22 per cent of India's GDP, but it still provides a livelihood for the bulk of the people who cannot be accommodated in the cities and high-tech industries.

Gandhi was a realist in recognising the need for rural development. Urbanisation and industrialisation can never be the solution for a country as vast and populous as India. Even America and France try to support their farmers who make up only a minority of their population. India cannot ignore its rural majority.

Gandhi might have been popular even in the West today, among people disenchanted with globalisation. His attempts to preserve local communities would have appealed to jobless people in dying industrial towns where factories have been forced to close down because of foreign competition.

Gandhi was not only a visionary; he was also a great communicator. He dressed like an Indian peasant because he identified with them. It was a political master stroke. Churchill ridiculed him, calling him a half-naked fakir. He could have easily been a Brown Sahib, an anglicised Indian, trained as a lawyer in England. But then he would have never been able to lead the masses in the freedom struggle.

He understood the importance of dress and communications -- a half-naked fakir who brought out his own paper.

He would have taken to the Internet like a duck to water. He thought movies harmful, I learnt from The Times of India. After all, he was a Victorian, born in 1869. The entertainment industry was suspect and immoral in the eyes of many earnest Victorians. But Gandhi also understood the importance of publicity. Had he been alive today, he might have posted his own videos on the Internet to spread his message of tolerance and non-violence.

Gandhi preached religious tolerance. He paid with his life for protecting the Muslims when he was shot dead at the age of 78 by a Hindu fanatic in the middle of a prayer session in January 1948, only five months after India's independence. His appeal for religious tolerance might not have moved the terrorists today, but the Muslims would have known they had a powerful friend.

India is also fighting a Maoist rebellion today. The rebels are active in the poorest, least developed rural areas. Would they have gained strength had there been rural development? One can only wonder. Gandhi is as relevant as ever in India today.

My son missing the Pujas

2006-10-02T11:35:00.000+08:00

My son is missing the Pujas. I realised that when my wife and I spoke to him last night and the night before. His college is miles away from the nearest big city where the Pujas are celebrated in America. He doesn't have a car, so he couldn't go over on his own, and there was no one else he could go with. There are few Bengalis, or for that matter Indians, on his campus. It's a small liberal arts college. So he looked at pictures of the Pujas in Calcutta (Kolkata) posted online by The Telegraph newspaper.

He loves visiting the Puja pandals just like his mother. Until he went to college last year, they would go out every day during the Pujas. They would go round the Puja pandals together. As he grew older, sometimes he also went out with friends. He and his friends would walk all around South Calcutta. I remember he walked all the way from Tollygunge to Gol Park. That's a long way. But he enjoyed himself thoroughly in the bustle and excitement of the Pujas.

He tends to be quiet and reticent, so he didn't actually tell us he was missing the Pujas. But that was clear when he said he had been seeing pictures of the Pujas in Calcutta and mentioned the big American cities where the Pujas are being held. Well, it will be all over today. It's the fourth and final day of the Pujas.

Fragrance Hotel, Balestier Road

2006-10-02T10:54:00.001+08:00

DSC00874
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

I thought I knew Balestier Road. But I have forgotten a great deal. I realised that yesterday when I took the wrong bus from the Ceylon Sports Club after seeing the Durga Puja organised by the Bengali Association. I had to get off the bus when it turned into Whampoa Drive and had to trudge all the way back to Balestier Road.

But there were compensations. I lunched at an old, roadside Chinese food stall and took this picture. I have seen ads for this hotel painted on buses, but this was the first time I saw it.

This part of Balestier Road is rather grimy unlike the leafy stretch near the Ceylon Sports Club a few bus stops away. But the old shophouse with the hotel signboard looked rather colourful compared with the boxy slab behind it housing the hotel.

Ceylon Sports Club building

2006-10-02T10:08:00.001+08:00

DSC00867-copy
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

The slip road turning left past the Ceylon Sports Club leads to the buildings behind the club seen in the previous picture. There was a time when I often used that road.

Ceylon Sports Club and beyond

2006-10-02T09:58:00.001+08:00

DSC00866
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

I took this picture from the pedestrian overbridge as I crossed the road to Ceylon Sports Club yesterday. The club grounds and the buildings in the distance brought back old memories. I remember them so well.

Ceylon Sports Club bus stop

2006-10-02T09:37:00.001+08:00

DSC00865
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

I got off at the bus stop opposite the Ceylon Sports Club to get to the Durga Puja organised by the Bengali Association off Balestier Road yesterday. I took this picture from the pedestrian overbridge as I crossed the road to the club side from where I had to walk a little farther to see the puja.

Durga Puja at the Bengali Association in Singapore

2006-10-01T17:49:00.001+08:00

DSC00871 copy
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

Ma Durga flanked by her children -- the elephant-headed Lord Ganesha and Ma Laxmi the goddess of wealth on the left and Lord Kartik and Ma Saraswati the goddess of learning on the right -- looked gorgeous. But the images were wreathed in incense smoke as the pujas were going on. I took the picture this morning just after anjali -- prayers to Ma Durga.

The prayers were already halfway through when I reached the place. And though the priest said there would be further prayers, I did not stay. I had already said my prayers to Ma Durga yesterday at the Ramakrishna Mission.

Yesterday was the big day -- Mahashtami. Today is Mahanavami. Tomorrow -- Bijoya Dashami -- is the last day of Durga Puja, which is celebrated over four days. The Wikipedia has an entry on Durga Puja, the biggest festval for us Bengalis.

I hardly felt like celebrating with my wife in Calcutta (Kolkata) and my son in college in America. But I had to say my prayers and see the image of Ma Durga. In fact, now I will be going to Little India to the Sri Veeramakaliamman temple which has images of both Ma Kali and Ma Durga.

Fox outfoxed

2006-09-26T21:09:00.000+08:00

I looove Bill Clinton! He's da man! The way he smacked down the Fox News guy was just fantastic! Chris Wallace looked so helpless as Clinton simply rolled him over, socking it right back to the Republicans. Yeah, I'm using mixed metaphors -- Fox News is the Republican idiot box, and this was a no-holds-barred fight.

How can the Republicans accuse Clinton of not doing enough to fight the terrorist problem when they themselves did nothing for the first eight months of the Bush administration until al Qaeda struck on September 11, 2001?

That's what Clinton asked the poor Fox News guy who had no idea what he had coming when he asked the former president why didn't he do more to "put Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business".

Clinton really gave it back to him. "So you did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me," he said to Wallace. "I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of?"

The former president really got downright personal. "And you've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever," he told Wallace. "But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it," Clinton said.

Poor Wallace just winced and fidgeted helplessly, failing to say anything much as the former president simply blew away the Republicans. He had done more to try to kill bin Laden than "all the right-wingers who are attacking me now", he said. Conservatives routinely criticised him for "obsessing" over bin Laden while he was in office.

"They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed," he said.

This is the best Fox News show I have seen.

The way they reported the Iraq war put me off for good.

I love America. But reporting a war as if it's a football game is as callous as one can get. Didn't they care that people were dying? And never mind Iraq, how good has the war been for America?

I am surprised Fox News is as popular as it is. Maybe that's because it's the idiot box version of Dumb and Dumber.

I saw the Clinton interview on YouTube. But by the time I tried to post the clip here, it had been removed from YouTube at the request of Fox News. They don't want to be exposed for the boobies they really are. As if the world didn't know.

Fox can't outfox a smart man like Clinton. If only Clinton could run for president again!

Teeny-weeny tiff?

2006-09-25T16:22:00.000+08:00

Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad was right when he described Singapore as "tiny".

But I can't understand why he said, "The country is tiny, don't be too proud", unless he was thinking like an army general, a business tycoon or a boy bragging, "Mine is bigger than yours."

I would have thought "tiny" Singapore had all the more reason to be proud of its achievements.

Shouldn't a country no bigger than the city of Pune, in India, or Edmonton, in Canada, and smaller than Kansas City, USA, be proud of itself when it has the world's busiest airport, busiest container port, fifth cleanest/least corrupt economy and one of the world's highest living standards, ranked 11th by the Economist magazine?

Malaysia can be proud of its prosperity too. But it is blessed with natural resources like oil, unlike Singapore which has progressed through sheer ingenuity and economic foresight.

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew can justly claim that, as Singapore's first prime minister, he transformed Singapore into one of the world's richest nations. It's the third richest Asian economy with a gross national per capita income of $27,490 surpassed only by Japan and Hong Kong, according to the World Bank.

Singapore owes a lot to MM Lee -- including, unfortunately, this latest dig by the former Malaysian prime minister.

Dr Mahathir's outburst against Singapore was really return fire to MM Lee.

The Chinese are marginalised in Malaysia and Indonesia, said MM Lee, adding that Singapore had to stand up to its bigger neighbours.

That infuriated Dr Mahathir, who is easily provoked by anything to do with Singapore.
Malays are marginalised in Singapore, he claimed.

Never mind that Singapore does not officially favour one race over another unlike Malaysia, which protects the indigenous Malays.

Never mind that MM Lee was right, according to some of the Chinese Malaysians.

The controversy is snowballing.

Even Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who avoids confrontations, has joined the fray.

He has said he will write to MM Lee asking for an explanation for his remarks, reported the International Herald Tribune.

"It is a statement that can incite Malaysian citizens of Chinese descent," he said.

He added, "If our country is not stable, Singapore will also experience the impact because it has economic interests here."

The last bit is true. After the coup in Thailand, the last thing Singapore needs is trouble with neighbouring Malaysia. The economies of all three countries are closely interlinked.

But neighbours being neighbours can't avoid run-ins, I guess.