At about three-fifths through I realised I was wrong. I should just leave the El Classico aside and let you watch how Fifa/PES 09 comes to life when Barcelona play.

Attempting to comment on their play would be an injustice.

1. The ‘move on’ nonsense allows police to do so if they suspect’ someone’s behaviour “shows that he is just about to commit an offence”. Ambiguity open for exploitation/abuse anyone?

2. An ‘Assembly’ can = 1 person. Ms Thio Li-Ann said it was ‘violence on the english language’. Haha.

3. Is it conceivable how the media/govt could possible say this is a liberalization of the political space here?

4. Singapore’s size is its ‘strength as weakness’.

Our size appeared as an economic weakness but now its an economic strength – we avoid suffering from stuff like Dutch Disease. As a city-state, our size allows for efficient government, but also for legislation to be crafted in support of the particular as opposed to the general. So because of the APEC summit, such legislation is decreed. There are worse examples – abolishing privy council appeals after the council reversed a decision in favour of JBJ, the Films Act almost relating specifically to Chee SJ (in that videos can only be about a member who can stand for election into parliament; CSJ is bankrupt and disqualified).

5. If we thought the democrat controlled us congress removed any chance of positive republican contribution, its far worse here! Even Siew Kum Hong basically admitted that he realises his role is that of a mouthpiece, and nothing more.

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Singapore is chugging along fine economically right now. However, civil liberties are restricted and ISD of course around. But the average person like me is unaffected, because, generally we have an honest and respectable government. What happens when it stops becoming honest and respectable? One day, this will surely happen (no such thing as perfection, we’re human), though perhaps later rather than sooner. But all these laws will be in place. What on earth will we do then?

I’m sorry but the mental notes Mr Orwell has imprinted on our minds in secondary school keep emerging from memory. I think the true test of a political system is not how things are when it works well – but how bad it doesn’t become when some nut comes (or breaks) loose. I don’t quite think we’re meeting that now.

2. Sam Mendes – For American Beauty, Jarhead and Winter’s Tale

3. I’m supposed have one more so it looks substantial but I don’t.

Here’s the story:

Turkey is an Islamic country. More specifically, it is a country with an Islamic majority. Turkey’s pride however, rests on its secular constitution and its adherence to democracy. The obvious irony here is that Islam, as a religion, presupposes that the state and religion are one. There is no distinction like in Christian society. Furthermore, Islam itself demands an authoritative rule, and insists its followers migrate to lands that are governed by Islamic governments .

The second one helps wind the rope another round. In its democratic elections, the Turkish population elected an Islamic party, known as the “AK party”. Their Prime Minister, a guy called Erdogan, reminds us of a Jose Mourinho like figure. He made himself famous recently by storming out of the World Economic Forum whilst on stage. So anyway, what do you do when a secular democracy elects an Islamic party to power? Do Muslims have to migrate then?

btw, speaking of ironies, Istanbul used to be Constantinople!

Then, to further complicate matters, the ‘democracy’ itself is under question. The secular constitution is generally regarded as sacred, and its Father, a guy called Kemal Ataturk (renamed, obviously) is its patriarch – think LKY with Obama’s cult following. In fact, Turkey has deeply entrenched, constitution-guarding powers such as its judiciary (which recently, tried to ban the AK party) and the military. These are fierce guardians of the secular constitution, but, as a result are protected by the constitution itself.

So in reforming the constitution, you limit their powers, for the sake of democracy. But does that allow the AK party to hold reforms further, and sow the seed for an Islamic state take place? And we don’t know if that is necessarily worse.

As a fourth complication, Mr Erdogan and his AK party are extremely confusing and no one knows what their motives are. They are pushing for EU membership and have undertaken reforms, but this has died down. So economically they appear to be ‘westernizing’. Culturally though, they recently tried reimposing the headscarf rule! So are they trying to make it an Islamic state? I would think people in general are quite confused.

Its quite astonishing the number of historic things happening at a given time. I thought Obama and the financial crisis was probably it. Truth is, there’s a whole lot of important stuff out there that we in Singapore don’t really know about. In the past I knew Turkey for two reasons. The first was its gastronomical name. Like Hamburg. Second was a fear that United would draw a Turkish team lest some stadium massacre repeat itself. “Istanbul”, had this ominous ring to it. I had no idea it was even a secular state – I thought it was some den for terrorists! Turns out its a pretty interesting social experiment after all.

If you read life’s review on the play on saturday, you would’ve read the part on ‘chilling out with the stars’ in a ‘low-key, by-invitation-only-after-party’. Well the invitations to the ‘by-invitation-only-after-party’ happened to be distributed to anyone and everyone on their way out from the theatre.

I was qutie skeptical of the guy waving cards at us declaring that we could meet the cast, and thought it was some cheap gimmick to get more money from us. Thankfully, Reuben, wanting to meet Mr Sam Mendes, wandered right in.

So in my deuter backpack, ethan in his polo shirt and reuben in his jeans, we walked right into a clearly out-of-our league bar sort of place (later discovered to be indochine) and right into waiters serving champagne, fancy little finger food in little shiny saucers, and our good friends dick lee and adrian pang hanging around. It was er, quite interesting, and awkward, obviously, until finally the cast actually came!

We soon found ourselves chilling out with ethan hawke and discussing philsophy with mendes. We even got rebecca halls number and a lunch on tuesday with her before she leaves for new zealand. We didn’t bring our cameras so I can’t show you all the chummy poses we struck with them that got snapped by mediacorp lenses. Do watch out for them in this weeks urban, though.

Ok really, we DID talk to both Rebecca Hall and Simon Russell Beale, AND got their signatures,  AND managed to get reuben cast as actor extraordinaire, getting Mr Beale quite interested in his work. Mr Beale said reuben should really try acting on the esplanade stage, because, for its size, its apparently the best in the world. Not kidding here.

Our good friends

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Anyway, as much as it was a fantastic performance, I wouldn’t have thought it to be a really good script  if I didn’t know Shakespeare wrote it.

So did you switch of your lights for Earth Hour?

I’ll confess I didn’t, not to make any sort of point or protest but because of, er, indifference. I’m obviously the very sort of person this whole movement was created for.

You have to wonder how effective this initiative is though. Sure, its excellent rallying entire world behind this. But your end can’t be simply ‘raising awareness’ can it? Shouldn’t it be something like ‘unleashing climate change’? Its doesn’t seem to different from Live8, though maybe not hypocritical in the way Live8/aid wasted resources in trying to alleviate poverty.

The thing I don’t like about all these mega-altruistic movements is the ease with which we comfort our consciences by these small acts. Like obviously switching off our lights for an hour is really a drop in an ocean. And I think we are all quite aware of the extent of climate change. I mean if anything, its all the horror stories of a post-globalwarming world that may drive home the message. (though the now late crichton will say something about this) It also fools us to believe these small piecemeal acts really makes a difference, which, I hardly think is the case.

This whole raising awareness thing is really like the whole ‘sowing the seed’ problem with evangelism. It lulls us into thinking we’re doing something when we’re not really doing anything at all.

But well, being the lazy person I am, if the proper, get-your-hands-dirty opportunity comes along hopefully I’ll remember writing this, feel like I have to live up to my idealistic words and actually do something that does more than ‘raise awareness’.

Blogging idealistically obligates you to do good things!

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On this note, I read (or skimmed through partially, rather) Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, Crowded, a few weeks ago, wanting to enrich my understanding of this whole green thing. I’d tell you not waste your time, because it rehashes alot of things we already know about climate change/green movements, and is written in his typical pro-american pep talk that can get you quite irritated when you’re not interested in the subject matter. It has some good parts on Oil, Islam and the middle east, though. I swear Freidman should stick to his foreign relation stuff.

But I’ll admit that the ‘small things aren’t of much use’ largely came from one of those chapters. He also was clear about the magnitude of the task la – he cited this study that proclaimed ‘15 wedges‘ of a green pie that needed to be fulfilled to AVOID DOUBLING (not decreasing mind you) the CO2 concentration. Like driving 2billion ethanol cars, doubling nuclear power to replace coal (thats hard), and er, halting ALL cutting and burning of forests, in about 50 years. Got fifteen such things to do, haha.

But yeah, I didn’t think he needed a whole book to do it and he could’ve saved some trees in the process.

1. It was clear midweek against Inter Milan that ManU started believing in their own hype, and likewise, it was evident against Liverpool.

2. I find it amusing that my dear friend ali so readily concedes ‘cheap rationalization’ in claiming liverpool to be the ‘better’ team. He must be drunk on festivities, so we forgive him. If we based ‘better’ on ‘aggregate score wins’, then we all would honestly think Mourinho’s Porto were the best team in Europe a few seasons ago. We don’t, why?

The championship manager in all of us want to believe the best team is made up of all the best individual players playing in footballing harmony. But thats only half true – otherwise arsenal would have conquered the planet many times over. The other necessary ingredient is consistency, which you display, agreed, over two legs, but also against all sorts of teams. The current liverpool have the harmony, but not exactly a glut of brilliant players, but fair enough, you can still say they have a great team. But whatever you say, they lack consistency.

3. In response to Ali’s diagnosis of Manu being ‘clinical’ and Liverpool having poor ‘mental strength’,  I think its quite possibly the opposite. United are far from clinical – their profligacy before goal can be ridiculously frustrating. Liverpool showed plenty of mental strength yesterday in coming from a goal down.

4. This leads me to repeat that Liverpool are a brilliant cup team. When they desire to play out of their skins on one-off occasions and throw their hearts behind every ball – the team, we have seen, can beat anybody. I will admit this, purely because of their record against the best teams this season. Yet this cup mentality never makes great teams.

4. United were enormously disappointing in the character/mental strength/hunger department. Fergie’s teams pride themselves on this, and they never capitulate. This one did. Thats why its the biggest loss in 20 years. at HOME too.

5. It also showed why Rooney’s just about the most important player united have. He’s the only idiot showing ant pride or urgency after it became 4-1. (Scholes and giggs too, but in their more laidback style)

6. I’ve never seen Vidic play worse. I think his red card was wholly deserved. In fact, I’ve seen numerous occasions where he’s deblierately fouled someone and got away scot free. He was also awfully clumsy (the hip control laying it for gerrard??) and just about got destroyed by Torres. Doing it after three attacking subs came on was great, too.

7. The midfield explains why United collapsed yesterday. The Defence can ensure 1-0 wins. Attackers earn their pay in stunning bursts of form (Manu are fantastic cos they have four guys who take turns with 10/10 games with alarming frequency) in the 4-0 wins. But when backs are against the wall, it is the midfield that needs to stand up, and ensure we can attack without shipping goals. That didn’t happen yesterday.

8. So ali’s right to say the midfield is weaker. Manu’s defence and attackers are par excellence, but in midfield, they have a glut of really good players, but no real standout.  The only real class midfielder is Carrick, and he’s been excellent the whole season. But he will never be a Gerrard or a Keane, because of personality. And we miss that. Our midfield looks deceptively robust only because giggs is having an Indian summer. It lacks a yin yang dynamism in the centre like scholes-keane or essien-lampard.

9. As for Uniteds fledglings, I call it the Confidence Lie. They ride on the team’s confidence and success.  You notice whenever a team wins two titles they suddenly have a great youth team, like Manu in 2000 and Chelseas in 2005? Where are those ‘youth stars’ now? The real indicator of  a youth players worth is when they have only a decent performance, not a ‘play out of your skin’ performance, and still contribute. Thats why Evans and Rafael/Fabio have potential and Gibson/Welbeck do not.

10. On the topic of squad depth however, I will maintain that this squad is Fergie’s Best in his 20 years. While the midfield is weaker, it is not at all weak. Our defence is overflowing with quality, and so is the striking department. I only disagree with the hype over the up and coming youth players. And I still think Oshea and Fletcher should play far less than they are doing.

11. On Liverpool, I will readily admit they made me sit up and take notice yesterday. They have this constant influx of strange sounding, strange looking players, that once hailed exclusively from spain but are now from from just about everywhere, that make them a very confusing squad  Insua? Dossena? Ngog? (sounds like a place in the Bible)  I have no idea who these people are!

But in all fairness, Rafa has assembled a good team, allowed them to familairise and play as unit. So he has been successful as a manager. It is a squad that recognises the main actors and supporting cast. But the biggest surprise is the quality that they’re last two results suggest. Were they fluke, confidence-inspired wins? Maybe. But they did, and confidence after all, does matter tremendously. So let’s see them start doing this on a regular basis and then we may consider calling them the better team, eh?

I now have Time, during and after my 8am-5pm Job. (minus duties of course, but even now my duties are quite enjoyable)

And now, the problem is, I don’t know what to do with it. I spend my weekends in church so those are out. I still have the odd driving lesson here and there, but that should be over soon. (Let’s not tempt fate here). I’m trying to get a handicap in that rich-man’s sport, so between that and driving, I have about 6 weekday nights taken up a month.

So I’m still quite free each month, and reading only entertains you for so long.

But what should I do?

I bet one reason why economists are so indecisive is because of this spectre called opportunity cost that can undermine any good proposal.

For some strange and morbid reason (they say dreams tend to be a collection of your stray and unassimilated thoughts), I dreamt that my right foot had been almost completely severed.

My right foot and ankle was, somehow, hanging on by a not-so-substantial piece of flesh, around the part of your leg where crew socks can be pulled up to. I was also, rather ridiculously, able to walk with but a slight limp, and without much pain. The pain amounted to nothing more than fuzzy pinprick sensations around the area, and there was a hardly any blood. I was also very patient and unperturbed about my predicament.

There was no blood. It was a very clean slice, and whatever had cut through most of my leg must have been a very precise instrument. I remember wondering if, say, I begun swinging my right leg in a pendulum-like way and generated enough force, whether the bottom portion would simply fly off.

For a visual picture, my almost almost severed off portion strkingly resembled a thick, raw piece of pork trotter, having the reddish meat inside enclosed by a white outline of fat. (I figure now, that it probably had something to do with me eating at a grill for dinner yesterday.)

Anyway, I woke up right before my Father was about to stitch my leg back together.

In the dream, I was are utterly convinced that everything was real. I got out of bed feeling that my right leg was quite tender, and I even limped a bit initially (no kidding).

Then I started recalling, in quite accurate detail, most of my dream. Eventually, a few long seconds later on my way to the toilet, I started laughing at myself. (No blood? Unperturbed? No scremaing in agony?)  I was however, also quite astonished at how, while dreaming, no part of my brain cried or rebelled against the distortion of reality. There are times of consciousness in dreams, and I felt quite lucid in this one, wondering how I had got the cut and so on. But I never even thought about the blood, or how I so calmly examined my own severed leg!

It reminded me of Paul’s statement in Corinthians, that “the God of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers”. I’m not sure about you, but I find the idea of deception exceptionally frightening. It implies an complete un-conciousness of your own condition (no autonomy!) to the extent that you aren’t even the slightest bit aware of what it is you are truly doing. Its a real tragedy because

a) you are cheated of something better (you think the life you’re living can’t in any way be better – think plato and cave/1984)

b) you don’t know the true consequences of your current actions. In fact, you think you’re doing well when you’re in actual fact screwing yourself over.

And well, I think we’ve all experienced smaller, and not so dangerous instances where, to use Paul’s words, the ‘veil has been removed’. I mean, I think most of us have experienced a) when we want something really really badly and can’t conceive a different outcome, only to get that second outcome and realise how much better it is. Or for b), where, unfortunately, the consequences have hit us already and we ‘learn the hard way’.

And right, I know this is a very typical and unsurprising ending, but the dream was a pretty striking reminder to consider our possible blindness, our vulnerability to a deception, and our utter ignorance to a truth that not only exists, but is better, but that could also mean an unplesant reality to those who don’t know it. And this applies, I think, to all sorts of things, and not just Christianity.

I would remember what it was like at an arbitrary point of ‘Childhood’ (probably between the ages of 7 and 9), and recall how I pictured myself at my current age. I would then compare it my present self, with the standard I set for myself at childhood.

So last night, I tried to remember how I thought Things Should Be at the age of twenty. I came to the conclusion that Seow the Kid was disappointed with Seow@20, but because Seow the Kid is also a nice guy, he wouldn’t have told Seow@20 how really disappointed he was.

Why was Seow the Kid disappointed? Simple, really. Seow@20 never lived up to his expectations! He’s injury prone lor. Never won a sports trophy either. Seow@20 failed his driving test! Gosh. Seow@20, yes, get this, was rejected from both Law AND Medical school! Wah damn loser. And yes, horror of horrors, Seow@20 doesn’t even have a girlfriend. (my brother often asks me about this, reflecting the importance of girlfriends to children).

But wait – this isn’t an exercise in self-pity. It says something about expectations.

Past expectations make for poor assessments of ourselves. For two reasons. When we grow older, we naturally get wiser. We see things with greater complexity, and our views become nuanced. Fairytale endings, you realise, don’t exist, and as Inconceivable as a Break Up is or University Rejection seems to you at the age of nine, it certainly is possible in life. Just like how Retrenchment and Death are Inconceivables at the age of Twenty.

Second reason: When we grow older, we don’t think the same, or feel the same way about things. Just like how I hated soccer in Primary school and became a diehard in ACS. Or like how I hated piano when I was kid and would really like to learn it now. Next time, I could very well enjoy Beef and Lamb, and maybe even appreciate alcohol. You don’t, and can’t really see these things.

So what good did this exercise ‘teach’ me? Not so much that I’m far wiser now and that I can trash my childish expectations. They do hold some worth. Its probably more useful next time, when I’m forty five. When I don’t live in a nice bungalow, don’t drive a flashy convertible, and have to think twice about entering an expensive Italiant restaurant. Then I’ll have to remember that my standards at twenty aren’t necessarily the wisest, or most important expectations to meet.

Its not being cynical or pessimistic. Its growing up!