zeekie: take two.

To small moments of peace and contentment.

Started a new draft last night. Staying at a friend's in Prospect Park, Brooklyn for the time being. Probably slowly freezing my balls off; it's that cold in his basement one-bedroom.

Started reading "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold. Love it so far. I picked up her latest book, "The Almost Moon", from the library's casual reading shelf - this was after I uncovered "The Ruins" from the same place - and I like it, so I figured I'd give "The Lovely Bones" a chance. Glad I did.

Gurgh. Don't really like the holidays. Everyone's gone and it's slightly depressing.

First time I've ever gotten dissed for liking Friday Night Lights (the TV series).

And I can't believe I only got Netflix in February this year. Seems like such a long time ago...

rewriting, that is. By now I've got about five different openings for the book, ranging from the entirely different to the same-in-concept-only. On the bright side, I'm fairly certain I'll have something to submit by the deadline, and with a lot more elbow grease it should be something I'm okay sending.

I just finished reading "The Ruins". Just... wow.

So I'm only about halfway through Scott Smith's "The Ruins", but I'm already shuddering, shivering, physically holding the book away from me as I read - as if that will help - and all other manner of things you do when you don't really want to keep reading but know that you just have to.

That's how freaking scary the damn book is.

And I started reading it at eleven this morning, and now it's four hours later and I haven't stopped, so that's how addictive it is.

What better to do on Christmas Day than discover how the CPF scheme is broken?:

Singapore has, since 1955, had a particularly good solution to the problem of providing a social safety net. Rather than simply have the government as provider of last refuge, the Singapore government instituted a transparent and relatively straightforward compulsory system for the collection and administration of social security monies.

The Central Provident Fund, or CPF, to give it its normal TLA, assigns every working citizen and permanent resident an account into which a portion of wages are paid, with contributions from the employer and employee. With online access, one's CPF account looks very much like a bank account, meeting the tests of transparency and good order.

That's the good news.

The bad news comes, predictably, whenever governments have large pools of money sitting around. There is a primal itch to do something with the funds. And so the CPF has been tweaked, stretched, re-purposed, and generally abused into the service of a number of different goals deemed worthy by the administration of the day.

One only has to look at the Mission and Values statement on the CPF web site to see the distance that has arisen between the primary mission:

Mission

“To enable Singaporeans to save for a secure retirement.”

Vision

“A world-class social security organisation providing the best national savings scheme for Singaporeans to enjoy a secure retirement.”

and the current Corporate Philosophy:

"The basic purpose of the CPF is to help members meet primary needs like shelter, food, clothing and health services in their old age or when they are no longer able to work."

The mission has been extended from saving for retirement, to cover shelter, health services, and unemployment. Investing in shares of Singapore Telecom, and providing funds for education have also featured over the years.

Once it was decided in 1968 that home ownership was a national goal, the CPF was modified to allow use of savings for home mortgages. This has spawned a whole bureaucracy to handle the movement of funds between CPF and banks and the Housing Development Board.

Singaporeans don't have sufficient medical insurance? In 1984, the CPF was used to fund Medisave, and in the process, create two accounts where there used to be one, so now CPF has an Ordinary Account, and a Medisave account.

Worried that people are putting too much of their savings into housing (ah, the law of unintended consequences), create a third account - the Special Account - to remove funds available for housing.

By 1988, worries were expressed that people would run out of money for their retirement before they died, and so a Minimum Sum Scheme was introduced, forcing contributors to leave money with CPF even though they had retired and presumably earned the right to their money.

Worried that people are relying too heavily on government for their retirement and need to take more responsibility for their future? Create the CPF Investment Scheme (CPFIS) in 1997 to allow a certain portion of funds to be used to buy certain "qualified" investments. Oh, and give the three local banks a monopoly on handling the accounts created, allow them to charge whatever they want, and don't insist on any service standards.

The economy has also played a role in CPF changes. When the government became worried that contribution rates were making Singapore uncompetitive, the employer contribution rate was reduced, restored, and then reduced again.

And so CPF has grown and mutated, serving whatever hot issue of the day needs a solution. What should be a straight forward retirement savings system, has become a multi-headed hydra with tentacles into most areas of Singapore life. Which is all well and good. Governments can do whatever they want, and people deserve the governments they get.

The effect of constantly tweaking a system set up to do one thing in order to make it do other things is complexity and the destruction of predictability. With each new mission, the original CPF has become more complex, more rigid, and more unpredictable.

But now to the latest assault on the CPF. Having done the numbers, the government actuaries are staring at a shortfall in CPF funds for members even though the Minimum Sum has been raised every year. The driver in this case is an increase in life expectancy. Although the official retirement age remains at 60, people are living into their 80's, destroying the underlying actuarial assumptions for the CPF.

What to do? One obvious solution would be to raise the retirement age. There are few societies that can afford to have a large portion of their population unproductive and attempting to live off savings.

Instead of taking this somewhat unpopular step, the government is proposing to break the basic promise of the CPF.

To quote from a paper comparing the CPF with the US Social Security system,

"the most salient features of the [CPF] scheme have not changed since 1955: it is compulsory, its basic principle is thrift and self help; and the contributions made by each member are earmarked for the benefit of the individual, with no redistribution among members"

The basic principle of each individual being the beneficiary of his own contributions is about to be violated by the proposed introduction of compulsory annuities which will commingle contributors funds into an external risk pool. Instead of having access to the money you worked for and saved, you will be forced to turn it over to an insurance company that will pay you a monthly sum. If you die the day after, tough, you lose everything.

Unless you have the luck of Methuselah and live longer than the actuarial tables predict, this is a pretty lousy deal. With interest rates among some of the lowest in the world and below the inflation rate, a Singaporean annuity is a financial disaster.

More importantly, these sudden changes to the rules destroy any planning that a prudent person has made for his own retirement. Funds that are earmarked for retirement are long term and patient money. We are also lectured about the power of compounding interest and the futility of market timing. Save now, and you will be fine later.

Except when "they" keep changing the rules. How is one supposed to plan, or trust, the guardian of one's retirement funds when the rules change unpredictably?

Ironically, there is still one situation in which the CPF achieves its original promise of funds for retirement. You can get all of your money, without any hold backs. Just promise to leave Singapore and never come back.

Link to site here.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

So. A nine-hour shift today, during which - wait for it - seven people came to take stuff out.

I don't pay any attention to the envelopes, so I totally missed the return address on this one. Which is why it was a surprise when the cover letter began: "I am an aspiring unpublished writer based in Singapore."

Unfortunately, the manuscript sucks. (This is not quite unexpected, though: 'aspiring unpublished writer' already displays laxness.)

In other news, the suckiness of the manuscript is in keeping with this day. I'm likely to have most of my results back by next week, and I'm predicting B's across the board except for my internship module. That sucks, of course, but I'm mostly okay with it; in previous semesters this would have bothered me, but quite honestly I now have bigger fish to fry.

"Goblin Town is a Tolkien-style fantasy novel. Thematically, it's something along the lines of Bilbo Baggins goes to Iraq."

Five slush manuscripts in a row, all by the same person.

Unfortunately, all of them suck.

My semester unofficially ended at 5.58 pm today. That was when I put the final period on my final paper (no exams!). Academically I'd call this semester a wash: classes didn't do much for me, and I didn't do much for them.

On the Tor front, though, things are moving forward. The author I've been talking about all semester has been offered a 'revise on spec' deal: this means she now gets all the editorial resources Tor has to offer, at least until a specified deadline. If the manuscript is deemed publishable by the end of the deadline, then a formal contract will be negotiated. If not, Tor is under no obligations whatsoever.

The exciting news I'm going to be part of those editorial resources, since my supervisor has told us (the interns) that this is our project. I'm not going to be at the company officially next semester, but this is one way I'll still be involved in the company. I'm considering asking whether I can intern unofficially, or even just come by weekly to pick up slush manuscripts to go through, but we'll see how that pans out.

I'm also looking forward to the next semester, where my classes will hopefully be better. I'm also thinking of interning at a literary agency, and of course both my applications for the Clarion workshop and the fellowship will be out by mid-next semester, so next semester should be an exciting one indeed.

Edited to add: I opened a slush fantasy manuscript that I feel very good about, and one of the other two interns is already on board, so here's hoping.

THE COMMA IS YOUR FRIEND, PEOPLE.

THE SEMI-COLON IS YOUR FRIEND, PEOPLE.

Thus endeth this lesson.

I went to see The Golden Compass yesterday. I went in with lowered expectations, thanks to the sighing reviews I'd read beforehand, but I think even if I hadn't read those reviews I still would have thought it was okay. Granted, it could have been a lot better, and it certainly didn't match up to the poetry of the Lord of the Rings movies, but - it wasn't bad.

The biggest thing that was (literally) lost in the translation from book to film was the last three chapters. I can see why those chapters were left out: in those chapters, protagonist Lyra, having saved her kidnapped friend Roger, brings him with her when she goes to rescue her father, unwittingly fulfilling a prophecy that ends with Roger dead. That's... kind of a bummer. Considering the demographic the film - as a Hollywood family fantasy film - is targeting, I'm not surprised at all that those chapters were cut. The way the film ends, with Lyra and Roger together on their way to rescue her father, is much more likely to garner positive word-of-mouth.

Marketing purposes aside, though, personally I don't have a problem with this lopping off the final chapters.

(I only really feel sorry for those schmucks who haven't read the books. Can't you see it? "Ohhh, Roger was so cute with Lyra! Let's go see the second movie when it comes out!" ... *two minutes into the second movie* wa Waaa WAAAAAAA.)

As for why I don't have a problem with this excision: the movie sets up Roger's rescue as the central quest. By the end of the movie, the quest is fulfilled, and the rescue of Lord Asriel is the cliffhanger. Is it as good a cliffhanger as the one provided in the book? No, but it is a cliffhanger, and a pretty good one at that. If I hadn't read the book, I would have thought it a sufficient one, and the movie, as a whole, relatively satisfying.

What prevents it from greatness, though, is that it doesn't quite divorce itself from the book. The pacing is odd throughout the movie: moments that are important in the movie are given short shrift. An example is the Billy Costa scene. It is what the movie turns on: this is when Lyra discovers what is being done to the kidnapped children, and what will be done to Roger if she doesn't rescue him first. In the book this is an important section, but in the book's larger context it's not as much. By the movie's structure, however, this should be a whammer of a scene. But the scene barely registers, and most of it is spent on Lyra poking around an eerie house, taking eons before she discovers Billy. And when she does, the scene snaps up her reaction and moves on. ...what?

Other moments that are not important drag on and on. An example of this is the introduction of Lee Scoresby. He's not important in the context of the movie (actually, he's not that important in the book either), but the scene where he's acquainted with Lyra gives the sense that he is important, simply because it's long. But then, as the movie goes on, it's revealed that he's... really not that important. You see how confusing that is?

If you've read the book, some of the weird pacing problems will make sense, but I think the film will end up confusing a lot of people, simply because it's neither here nor there. The pacing doesn't work to the "Rescue Roger" throughline of the movie; it's almost funny how Lyra has to keep telling people (and by extension the audience) that she's on a quest to rescue Roger. If the throughline is working, it shouldn't need to be said. As it is, it feels too much like the scriptwriters knew that the movie was too sprawling and had too many (movie-wise) pointless digressions, and so felt the need to prod us every now and then.

It's a pity. I really wanted to love this film, but I really only like it now.

There are some days when I'm starving and exhausted and know I should eat something proper (if only not to become ridonkulously snap-happy at work), but for some reason one food is as appealing as the next, and so before I know it I'm halfheartedly munching through a faintly repulsive bun.

Today is one of those days.

I've also noticed that I write much more easily when I'm exhausted. Whether I write better depends on the day, but certainly words spill across the page much more readily.

And finally: first snowfall today. I stepped outside the library and there they were, small flecks of white swirling and settling. Correction: first snowfall I witnessed this season today. It snowed several days ago, but that was while I was sleeping. By the time I woke and left the apartment, there were only snow piles and no snowfall.

Maybe it's because I've experienced only two snowfalls, but I think the first flakes will never lose their magic for me.

I was going to start by saying that it was probably a bad idea to stay up reading, particularly since tomorrow (or today) is a long day at work, but then I changed my mind.

My introduction to John Scalzi was via "The Android's Dream", a book I enjoyed very much. So when I saw "Old Man's War" on the shelves at Tor, I naturally took a copy.

It's his first book, although you wouldn't know reading it. There are several semi-awkward chunks of exposition, but the writing is so good that he almost gets away with them. His dialogue is particularly 'punchy'; I suspect if he ever turns to screenplays he will be very successful.

I began reading the book several days ago, because I'd been reading "Speaker for the Dead", and had to put that away due to the recent Card revelations. The opening interested me - an old man visits his dead wife's grave, and then enlists in the army - and so I kept reading. I've been reading in hour-long or so periods ever since then, until tonight.

There are some books that you can read in controlled bursts. Then there are those that you think you can do so with, but eventually discover you can't. This is one of those books, at least for me. Another was "A Home at the End of the World", yet others "Prep", "Never Let Me Go" and "Maurice". I'm hard-pressed to find a commonality between them, save that they all exceed a certain baseline of quality, but there it is.

And I think that's the main reason I want to be published. The desires to be recognized, to earn shitloads of money, to earn strangers' respect and attention - all of these things are true, but at the end of the day (or night, as it were), I think I just want someone to close the covers of my book and think, 'damn, that was worth it'. To have someone give his or her time to you and feel better for having done so: if you think about it, that's really the most you can ask from and offer anyone.

...to win both the British and the Irish National Lottery on the same day.

Edited to add: No, I haven't really won the lottery. You know those emails you get informing you that you've won such-and-such lottery...?

Am I the only one who's ever gotten those emails...?