that the two things I am most interested in are: clothes and books.
Politics, television, et cetera, I try to keep abreast of - and am sometimes moved to passion by - but, as far as steady interest goes: clothes and books, books and clothes.
I packed up my Singaporean belongings today. My family has been considering a move early next year, so I decided to preempt any throwing out of my stuff in absentia. Minus my clothes, everything I considered of value was boxed.
In the end I had three boxes - and two were filled with books.
Like I told Lk, I wasn't sure how to feel about this. On one hand, one box seems a miserable showing for twenty-two years of living (I'm not counting the New York years). On the other hand, my friends and I have never been the type to give and give a lot.
Of course, I'm also missing the items that were sold, casualties of the period I was addicted to gambling and in massive debt. Cash Converters made a bundle off me in this time; I remember selling, variously, a DVD player, a pair of speakers from Mel, and a camera that was a group gift from my bunch of closest friends. That period - which stretches years - is a part of my life that's definitively over, but I didn't quite realize until today the losses I incurred.
I think in its aftermath I simply lost interest in items. Actually, to consider it, the five years post-secondary school was a long renunciation of things: things I gave to Calvin in junior college and to two crushes in the army, each gift only reminding me, in the end, of their horrible futility; things given to me that I kept only to convert later to bet slips; phantom things that I stopped considering because they were beyond my shrinking means.
A long period of poverty will do that to a person, I think: because I could no longer afford to buy gifts, I stopped attaching value to giving things altogether, store-bought ones because they were out of reach, and hand-made ones because they were proof I couldn't give otherwise.
And I think even after I got the scholarship - and stopped gambling - a variation of that thinking remained: I simply lost interest in things altogether. Sure, I still love me some presents, and my spending has never been more outrageous, but I don't feel much attachment to the physical fruit of my or others' money: I could live without just as easily, because I've already been there. Come to think of it, that probably explains my frequent losing of things post-SPH.
(This is not meant to offend those of you who have spent time and money on your gifts; as that classic line goes: it's not you, it's me.)
And so, considering my complicated history with things, perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised to find myself with only one box of them. Besides, I'd like to think I carry the things I lost and sold in my head (probably not true, but comforting nonetheless).
And in the time I've taken to write this, it has also occurred to me that the best presents given to me didn't involve any thing at all.
I can't box the memory of playing SNES with Mel and Lun, no more than I can box the memory of these past weeks spent playing Wii with Jm, Wh, Mel and Janus.
And all those coma-inducing nights of supper (and more)? Can't box any of them either.
I think my current philosophy, as evolved from those early days of bric-a-brac, is that things are ultimately only a means to an end. If they've been used properly, it doesn't matter if you lose (or sell) them, because the memories they'll have generated by then should be enough.
And anyway I'd like to think that, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I'll be judged by the things I've done and been, not by some box left in a corner of my room.
So one box really isn't all that bad. In fact, it's not bad at all.
...now go buy me a MacBook please.
Raising the bar
Jul 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition
A rare slip-up in court by Singapore's elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew
MEMBERS of Singapore's government are notorious sticklers for legal exactitude. So it has been interesting to watch the reaction after the country's elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew - a British-trained lawyer before he became a politician - gave inaccurate testimony in the trial of two opposition leaders.
In May Mr Lee testified in a hearing to decide damages against Chee Soon Juan, the leader of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), and his sister, Chee Siok Chin, for defaming the former prime minister and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, who is now prime minister himself. Mr Lee senior claimed that after the London-based International Bar Association (IBA) held its annual conference in Singapore last October, its president sent a letter to the Law Society of Singapore praising the country's justice system. It has since emerged that there was no such laudatory letter.
Mr Chee (who along with his sister was briefly jailed for contempt for accusing the judge in his case of bias) tried unsuccessfully to have the hearing reconvened in the light of Mr Lee's incorrect testimony. Mr Lee's counsel, Davinder Singh, wrote to the court on July 9th admitting that his client was wrong about the letter but noting that the IBA's president, Fernando Pombo, had praised Singapore's "outstanding judiciary" in a speech at the start of the conference. Mr Singh argues that what matters is that the IBA did praise Singaporean justice, not whether it did so in a speech or a letter. Mr Chee says there is a difference: the speech was made before the conference, where criticisms of the justice system were aired. Mr Lee was claiming, in effect, that the IBA was still impressed after this.
By coincidence, on July 9th the IBA's Human Rights Institute issued a report criticising the use of defamation suits by the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) to silence the opposition and the press, and expressing concerns about the independence and impartiality of Singapore's judges. The law ministry has rejected the IBA's report, pointing out that Singapore's legal system has won excellent ratings in other international surveys. Indeed, in cases not involving the country's leaders, there is no dispute about its quality. As for the IBA's worries about cases involving PAP figures, the law ministry claims that the IBA failed to substantiate its "grave" allegations with evidence, though its report does discuss several worrying cases.
America's State Department, which is in rather less danger of being sued by the PAP than are the opposition or newspapers, has expressed concern about judicial independence in political cases in Singapore. In its latest human-rights report, in March, the department noted that the PAP's consistent success in defamation suits against critics "led to a perception that the judiciary reflected the views of the ruling party in politically sensitive cases."
According to the Straits Times newspaper, Mr Lee on July 11th accused human-rights organisations of "a conspiracy to do us in". He said that they saw that Russia and China had been studying Singapore's success, and hence regarded it as a threat. Mr Lee and the government argue that doing things their way has made Singapore prosperous, orderly and corruption-free, and has earned international respect. The threat of defamation proceedings may make opposition politicians weigh their words more carefully than they do elsewhere. But Singaporean voters continue to buy the PAP's argument that such constraints are a price worth paying so far.
Some people REALLY need to stop talking. A conspiracy? Between Russia and China? Really? Because somehow I suspect China is less than concerned about Singapore, particularly in any economic way.
So. "White Teeth" and "White Fang"? Totally not the same book. Read the former, people! It's great. I'm only sorry I had them confused for so long.
I am officially the only sibling who doesn't have a university degree.
..in other words, wish my sister a happy graduation!
1) I'm about to start Act II of the script; my mode of working seems to be: scribble on a notepad in a cafe, and transcribe when I get home. I can't seem to write directly on the computer; something about the white screen makes my writing muscle seize up completely.
...I just realized this doesn't happen (a lot) when I'm in the newsroom. Bizarre.
2) The whole online LGBT video idea has to be shelved. It's a pity, because I found a user-created Wordpress template that fits my needs perfectly. But what with the YouTube crackdown, a lot of the videos have been disappearing, and I don't want to create a website where the links are likely to die.
3) I'm quite happy with the amount of reading I've done, even if some of the books have titles like "Sophie Pitt-Turnbull Discovers America". I think my favourite new discovery is Scott Westerfeld; I've read three books by him now, and they've all been fun. He's a bit like John Scalzi (and the two are friends, which doesn't surprise me), and I highly recommend "So Yesterday", which is a standalone novel.