Merry Christmas

To everyone out there who's feeling lonely in crowded places.

Have a peaceful time.

Two degrees and counting

The first deep winter since New Zealand in 1994.

Brrr....

Satellite TV

Never mind the uneven water pressure in the shower leaving me feeling like cold sashimi from Hokkaido and hot chilli crab from Singapore at the same time.

I've got satellite TV now, muahahaha...

Taiwan, HK, PRC, US, The Philippines and pretty much most networks along the Pacific Rim.

Wifey's much happier now. Instead of bland government-sanctioned news and dramas about heroes of the Sino-Japanese War, she has Cantonese serials et al. And I have my BBC and Nat Geo.

Being a TV junkie never felt that good.

Reflections across The Bund

Spent part of the day walking around the area east of the Whampoa River and enjoyed it somewhat. The buildings around the Oriental Pearl Tower are new and not as densely-built as the rest of Shanghai. I can actually see the sky without four or five grey buildings encroaching my field of view. The idea of living in Pudong actually appealed to me until I realized that there are no wet markets in the area. The rent's probably paid in USD too.

Anyway, it was an enjoyable day overall, without any scatological episodes. Rotavirus is a b*tch.

Reflections along The Bund

After reading about it in JG Ballard's Empire of the Sun, watching a Chow Yun Fatt series on it and thinking about it whenever I read about World War 2, I've finally set foot on the famous stretch along the west bank of the Whampoa River.

And what a disappointment it was.

Grey.

Smoggy.

Touristy.

If you're thinking about it from 1984-ville, forget it. Queen Elizabeth Walk and The Padang exude a greater sense of history.

So much for that.

Connected at home

Well, Wifey has managed to get the apartment connected to the net via China Telecom DSL. I must say it's much faster experience than what the resort offered. The property agent says it's 1 Mbps. It certainly feels close to what I used to get back in 1984-ville with 1.5 Mbps. So I'm going to stop complaining for a while, at least until the next cold front hits (ETA this weekend) and temperature drops to single digit readings.

I must say we hit jackpot with this property agent who fixed this apartment for us. He's young, energetic and goes beyond his call-of-duty to help us fix the TV and net connection. He's also helping some other non-Mandarin speaking poor sod get his money changed and other stuff. You can't find any housing agent in 1984-ville who is willing to do all this, even for a fee. I highly recommend him (the agent, not the poor sod) to anyone who's looking for an apartment in Shanghai.

One thing about people in Shanghai. They seem to be NOT unhappy, which is not saying much until you realise that folks back in 1984-ville do not smile at all. So far, ALL service staff whom we've encountered smile as a norm. The thing is, they all have the same inscrutable facial expression that's inherent to ethnic Chinese people. It's what I'd described as the Monday-morning-face-on-the-subway-to-work but they are more ready to break into a smile when you engage them in conversation.

I have a lot to learn from the Shanghainese in the coming months...

Embedding of image...

via e-mail...

<img src="http://tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:jgrDS9tpjWgaQM:http://www.teamviewer.com/images/headerright/download.jpg">

this is so maddening, with only 2 pipes out of a country of 1.5 billion people!!

argh...

--
posted via e-mail

Internet slowdown

in Shanghai, and apparently all over China if you're attempting to access overseas websites.

The IT guy says there are only two pipelines out of China through Hong Kong and Macau. The third link through Taipei was severed during an earthquake last year.

Facebook, Blogger and other popular websites are all painfully slow, which is why I'm writing this via Gmail, which seems to be the only thing not affected by the traffic jam through HK and Macau.

More on this later.

Vale J.B.

Someone who held out to the end.



We will miss you.

Image of The Great Depression

This is a photo taken in the 1930s. It shows a mother of seven young children staring hopelessly, perhaps wondering if there would be a next meal or maybe even about the future of her children.



Economic uncertainty is a cloud that hangs over all of humanity.

For, behold, the days are coming, in which they shall say,
Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare,
and the paps which never gave suck.
Then shall they begin to say to the mountains,
Fall on us;
and to the hills,
Cover us.

Mid-autumn

The fall equinox.

Beyond an astronomical event where the sun crosses the equator on its southward journey, marking the seasonal reversal in both hemispheres, it is a time when we look forward to bountiful harvests.



Here's wishing everyone a peaceful mid-autumn

On education in 1984-ville

So we had a long talk about what's so wrong about sending kids to public schools in 1984-ville.

My reflections on the problem from a teacher's POV. Talk to any teacher in a local public school and top gripe he or she has is the lack of a defined job scope.

Strange.



Teacher = teach? No?

Apparently not. At least in the eyes of government officials. You would think that the primary job descriptors for teachers are:

(i) Plan lessons
(ii) Deliver lessons
(iii) Assess effectiveness of learning
(iv) Evaluate effectivness of teaching

On average, I step into the classroom for 3 hours a day. That's what it says in my time-table. From experience, I need 2 hours of preparation work (i.e. lesson planning) for every hour of class. That excludes setting and marking assessments as well as coaching weaker students outside of time-table, which probably takes up about an hour a day. There are "peak" periods, especially during exam season. But on the average, I would need to spend about 3 (lesson) + 6 (planning) + 1 (marking & coaching) = 10 hours a day to be an effective teacher. That's 2 hour more than a normal working day.

But on paper, administrators see only the lesson hours (3 hours/day for me). And light bulbs flash in their heads.

Oh, only 3 hours of teaching a day! Wow, that's great. Teachers have at least 5 hours free to do non-teaching projects, sit in committees etc.

Hence you get a blurring of job scopes. It's no longer teaching. It's teaching + other stuff.

Let's see what I've done this year that's not teaching:

1. Organizing an international competition (2 meetings a week & an hour of organization work a day for 3 months)

2. Sitting in a committee overseeing school canteen operations (Monthly inspections + stallholder liaison + administration work)

3. Liaison with government department for coordinating of student research projects on a national level for the past nine months (an hour of e-mail work per week + monthly meetings).

4. Training students for academic competitions (an hour a fortnight).

5. Hosting foreign visitors (ad-hoc basis, but basically I'm on call 24/7 for the duration of their visit).

You know, there's a saying that you hire the right person for the job. Generally you'd want to hire someone qualified or experienced in doing something. So a fireman fights a fire, a gardener tends the garden, a teacher teaches, a banker banks etc. So why are school administrators hiring teachers to be event managers, adminstrators, trainers, hosts, operations managers etc when it says on my name card "Teacher"?

The switch?

Maybe?

I need something reliable after having the X31 die in the middle of dinner time.

Racing

The Race of Life.



There is only one race in life that matters.

How are you running yours?

My so-called second life

One of the drawbacks of having a previous-generation graphics card...



can't play second life...argh!

and getting a dedicated 3D card just for this is not within my current budget...

can't even get sh*tty DOTA to run

In memoriam

Joe Rosenthal died two years and two days ago. There was nothing in the media marking this anniversary.

Joe who?

Think this photo...

More updates on alternate choices

So region-coding sucks and you're restricted to 5 changes of region codes on your PC DVD player.



I cannot play DVDs from any region on my Ubuntu PC.

Libdvdcss2 rocks!

Ha!

What a Bolt!

And what a sprint.


Xinhua


19.30 seconds over 200 metres. Nobody thought that Michael Johnson's 1996 record could ever be breached.

Torch relay saboteurs
Phelps
Team Redeem
China winning both table-tennis women's *team* gold & silver

This is the most thrilling Olympics ever. Not even Sydney 2000 could top this.

Taking the red pill

And so I wiped Windows off the HDD and installed Ubuntu.



Being a strict non-geek, I hadn't expected to do anything useful beyond stare at the pretty start-up screen. So I was pleasantly surprised to find myself surfing wirelessly, watching DVDs, creating documents and blogging.

All this painlessly and quickly, too, on a Pentium-M 1.3GHz, which was anaemic running Windows.

So how much does it cost to get Ubuntu, the office software (word processor, spreadsheet + presentation), media players, browser etc?

$0/-

It's a free 700MB download from www.ubuntu.com

Go ahead, do something different today.

Of poetry, song and music

Mankind expresses its hopes and dreams through art, music, song, poetry.

The citizens of 1984-ville mark 43 years of independence this Saturday. Fighting off cynicism about the country's future, I went around looking at national anthems. It's clear that people all around the world wish for peace, happiness and we celebrate bravery.

It's ironic that I cried buckets after listening to this girl sing The Star-Spangled Banner. Ironic because the anthem of an alien country with an alien culture touches me more than my own.

Words have as much meaning as we are willing to give.

Freedom, happiness and bravery.

I sincerely wish for a better place here in 1984-ville and that we get a chance to put right all the things that have gone awry.

When you hear the National Anthem or the National Pledge the next time, ponder on the meanings.

Peace to you.

And do not let anyone or anything crush your spirit.

Good morning yesterday

So Paul Anka is visiting Singapore for a concert.
This song is one of my favourites.



By the way, there's a blog by someone from my mum's generation and it's right at the top of Google search for "good morning yesterday". It's a pretty interesting blog for anyone who enjoys reading about the older, better days of life in Singapore. No really, I did enjoy the 1970s and early 80s, when beaches were less artificial and you didn't have to smell the sun cream on the guy next to you.

I had an epiphany while reminiscing about yester-years. Now I'm beginning to understand why people resist change and why it's so difficult to abandon mindsets and overturn established authority (think the authority of an eternal yesterday as defined by Max Weber).

We hanker for a form of continuity as a sense of security. For mortals, it is a connection to immortality. That is the reason why it's so tough trying to educate people.

For now, I'll stick to having the same lunch everyday...

Superman

Listen to the theme.

I dreamt of flying around the old neighbourhood and kissing Lois Lane. Christopher Reeves was super.

A quarter century love affair

0 1983.

8 The Macintosh has yet to hit the markets.

3 A little boy trying to escape from a dysfunctional family.

5 A book about creating games with BASIC & Apple II+.

9 An era when 64k was king.

3

6 Before LAN gaming, we competed with ourselves. The light from the green
6 monochrome reflected off our eager eyes. Our minds working at a frantic
9 pace. How do we solve the last puzzle? How would the victory screen look?

4 For brief moments, virtual became reality.

Mamma Mia!

Anni, Benny, Bjorn & Agnetha...

Chiquitita
you and I cry
but the sun is still in the sky
and shining above you
let me hear you sing once more
like you did before
sing a new song
Chiquitita



With the exception of Celine Dion, no other Eurovision winners have made it quite as big as the quarter from Sweden.

Mop-like hair, big collars, bell-bottoms...*sigh*...I miss those days...

Teaching journal 2

What did I learn in class today?



1. 4-6pm, 34 degrees and 99% humidity is about the worst moment to get teenagers to sit still.

2. Jokes help, even awful ones.
A Singaporean, a Malaysian and a Thai walked into a pub one day...

3. Teach with lots of specimens and hands-on to keep them (and self) from dozing.
Eeek! Watch that Isoptera disintegrate...

4. It's no harm letting them make some noise or dismissing them early.
Mostly for my own benefit *snigger*

Teaching journal

What did I learn in class today?



1. Test questions should be as specific as possible.
Blood pressure? Atrial stretch?

2. Go slow & don't be afraid to give breaks
Don't worry about completing the curriculum. Very MOE, tsk tsk...

3. Going though the answers immediately after a class quiz is good.
Gives me an idea of the level of learning

4. Plan practical to minimise waiting time & around available resources.
3 hours of 7 replicates is 21 man-hours wasted. Consider resources that allow for parallel use

Configuring wintel wireless adapters

Remind me again why I hate Wintel hardware.

Spent the pass 3 hours trying to get my X31 to latch on to the wireless network at home. It was a hair-pulling experience.

Remember, those of you who are using the old Intel 2100 wireless cards. You have to un-hide your network's SSID, otherwise it wouldn't be able to detect it. Even if you type in the ID manually.

I hate Wintel!

Small desktop PC project

So, in an effort to reduce freight charges, my next project is this...


Source: mini-itx.com

Ultimately housed in a 6cmx25cmx25cm casing...



Watch this space for updates...

Beginning of the crash?

or maybe not, depending which analyst you talk to.

However the situation turns out by the end of this trading week, there's no doubt that we're in the midst of an oil shock not felt since the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War.



At $2.20 a litre, I'd take a can of cola anytime...

On hives, allergies and all things uncomfy

It's a weird but liberating experience realising that you have food allergy after 3 decades of conscious existence.



I think that excludes 99% of crappy, lukewarm, human perspiration soaked street-vendor food.

So glad there's a well-equiped pantry next to the workstation.

Lessons in the afternoon

4-6pm is a bad time for anything intelligent. Including trying to sit down in a stuffy room under tropical weather.

Serious stuff should be done strictly between the hours of 9 to noon. Any other time is for play.

Japanese sea bass

I like eating fish but not scaling and gutting it. Very messy and hives break out all over my hands afterwards. But that's not detracting me from this delectable fish...



Locally, it's known as Japanese Sea Bass. But it's actually not a bass. Might be known as Yellow Croaker. In Mandarin, it's 黄花鱼 and better enjoyed steamed than fried, even if it's not entirely fresh. In fact, mine was in the freezer for 2 weeks before I took it out today.

All you need to do is to gut it (yucks!), apply some cooking oil, ginger strips and spring onions before tossing it into the steamer for 10 minutes under high heat. Yum yum. The other good thing is that its bones are relatively large so it's a safer alternative to other fish.

Enjoy...

The accidental expat

Source: pillman-journey.blogspot.com

I am going to miss the lab gang and all the masak masak fun. Not to mention the MSG-induced headaches...

Unfulfilled ambitions

1982

Miss Sheila asked me what I wanted to be. The idea of getting a job was totally alien to me. I glanced at the grammar textbook and replied, "Lion-dancer!"

"You won't find much work with that. You'll only get to dance during Chinese New Year."

Hmmm...that didn't sound right, coming from her.

Meng Hua, who was seated next to me, gave a nudge and muttered under his breath, "Pilot! Pilot!"

"OK, I'm going to be a pilot."

Everybody smiled.

1984

Fifth uncle hollered, "Don't support your glasses with your fingers!"

Not knowing what to do while wearing glasses for the first time, I did whatever he told me.

"You're short-sighted now. There goes your dream of being a pilot."

I bit my lip. Not because I couldn't be a pilot.

***

1990

"You make it sound so simple," said Jane. "You're really good at explaining things."

"Nah..." I turned positively pink while she giggled.

"Have you considered being a teacher in future?" she asked.

In fact, I did. I remembered all the good teachers that came along and made a difference, not because of their extensive knowledge but because of their outlook in life. Just average Joes and Janes trying to make sense of the world in simple & dignified terms.

1992

"Have you thought about what you're going to do in future?" Mum asked as she flipped through the forms for admission to university.

"I want to be a teacher," I replied.

"Teacher?" Mum snorted. "What good is there in being a teacher?" The derision continued for a few more sentences which I cannot remember.

"But I like teaching."

"No. You're going to study to be a doctor in future," she said, with a degree of finality in her voice.

I retrieved the forms, minus her signature.

I bit my lip. Not because she didn't like the idea of her eldest son as a teacher.

***

2007

The opthalmologist flashed a wide smile at me as he switched off the instrument. It was a smile worth at least a dozen dental advertisements.

"Tell your friends about me," he boasted. "I can help them!" he continued, thumping his chest and flashing the thumbs-up sign.

I looked around and revelled in near 20/20 vision, bearly 48 hours after surgery.

Perhaps second chances do exist...

When words fail

Irrawaddy Delta, Burma
3 May 2008


Sichuan, China
12 May 2008 2:28pm

The sweeping tide

Australia got the ball rolling before 2008 when it booted out the incumbent government in November 2007 and welcomed Kevin Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat to China, as the new Prime Minister. The tide of change has not stopped since and democracies, real or otherwise, across the world saw sweeping changes in their governments.



Taiwan was next with the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) coming home to a landslide over the Democratic People's Party (DPP) in the Legislative Yuan, or Assembly, elections, held in January 2008. The DPP, in power since 2000, is led by outgoing President Chan Shui-bian, who has the habit using off-coloured phrases occasionally. The change in government was completed when Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT thrashed Frank Hsieh of the DPP in Presidential elections two months later.



Pakistan took its turn on the political centre stage when, in February, the PMLQ party of President Pevez Musharraf was almost booted out of the legislative body by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), formerly headed by the recently-assasinated Benazir Bhutto. It's ironic that Musharraf was described by George Bush as his friend and ally because Musharraf came to power through a 1999 military coup and had sacked and jailed most of the independent judiciary in Pakistan, especially after the former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry declared the continued Presidency of Musharraf unconstitutional. Well, the good news is that Chaudhry has been freed and reinstatement is pending approval by the PPP government.



Political action then moved to Malaysia, where the seemingly strong National Front government of Abdullah Badawi was embarrased by a hotch-potch of small opposition parties, independents and a political blogger, which not only denied the NF a two-thirds majority in the federal legislative, Dewan Rakyat, (Lower House of Parliament) for the first time since independence in 1957, but also grabbed 5 State governments out of 12. Abdullah's position in his own party is under severe scrutiny. With internal party elections coming up later this year, there is an ever-growing call for his blood. However the most anticipated outcome of this watershed election is the return of former Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, who was arbitrarily removed from power and jailed after a very pubic spat with former PM Mahathir over the handling of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In fact, this election was called early because Anwar remained ineligible to contest for a certain period of time after release from jail. Anwar's wife has said she will step down from her seat in parliament to create a by-election for Anwar after he becomes eligible to contest.



From the hot and humid tropics, the world's attention turned to the isolated Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, the land of the Thunder Dragon. The King of Bhutan called for a change from absolute monarchy to democracy. This despite having the respect and admiration of most Bhutanese. Sometimes one really wonders if this really is the benevolent ruler found only in fiction. This is the very same king who imposed a total smoking ban in the country. And he ordered the statisticians to measure the progress of the people in terms of a "happiness index" instead of per capita income, GDP or other traditional methods of economic progress. Shangri-La, anyone?



Zimbabwe came up for the electoral process next on 29 March. Unfortunately, Robert Mugabe, the incumbent president, and his Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front government (Zanu-PF), in power since independence in 1980, has decided not to release the results of elections. As of the time of this writing, Zimbabweans are still awaiting official results to the legislative and presidential offices. Informal results collated by the oppostion Movement for Democractic Change (MDC) has indicated opposition wins in both. The police authority, no doubt controlled closely by Zanu-PF, has physically stopped MDC lawyers from going to the courts to petition for the release of official results. One can only wonder how long more Mugabe and his party wish to hang on to power.

Up next? South Korea, Nepal, Italy, Serbia, Cambodia, New Zealand and the big one - the United States, where the Most Powerful Person in the World could be a black or a woman.


Source: www.orstudents.org
Source of all flag images: www.flags.net

For once, the action-packed news does not involve men chasing or hitting a ball, running around a rubber mat, pounding one another to bits, driving noisy, climate-changing cars at 300mph or trying to grab some stupid flame torch making its way around the world.

Oh, and to dictators around thew world, I hope you sleep well tonight...

The Miracle Mile

Four A.M. We ran the miracle mile
"You Get What You Give" - The New Radicals

No longer conscious of my movement, I discovered a new unity with nature. I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamt existed.
-Sir Roger Bannister

Source: Hulton Archive

It used to be that I was chasing a sub-four-minute mile in school. Hoping to do my own version of the Roger Bannister run on May 6, 1954. I never did it and the experience mirrored my life off the track - mostly bitter but crucial for getting through life and dealing with disappointments.

Two decades and many ectopic beats later, every mile I finish, no matter how slow, is a miracle. Thank You, God, for giving me a ticker that still ticks.

Research and stuffiness

Copyright: ConcreteBob Software

Just to prove that Nobel laureates are regular joes...

H. pylori research lab

You can't deviate that far from normality with a stuffed Norwegian rat as mascot

Try the gastroman game, great fun for the final year surgery spot.

Things and stuff

It's been rather crazy over the last 6 weeks, getting swamped with work, mostly resulting from workplace incompetency and breaching of job scope. The work culture in 1984-ville is very bad. There is no effective legislation protecting employees and everyone is expected to work beyond 40 hours a week in addition to doing things that are outside of the job scope. Employers often use this culture to slip sneaky clauses into the terms of employment. Things like "...and any other matters that the employer may require the employee to perform." Clauses like that effectively give employers unfair advantage and make employees' job scope arbitrary. And employee-employer contracts are largely unregulated by legislation, so they are essentially private agreements between two parties, meaning the outcomes of disputes are decided in civil courts.

Photo: Alemeda Labor Council

Almost all of my colleagues accept this unfair and unequal labour relationship, perhaps for fear of breaking their rice bowl (or bread basket, if you aren't into rice). Anyone agitating for an improvement in work conditions is seen as rocking the boat. The thing is, employer-employee relationship is really very simple. In any industrial relation, you have three main components - employer, employee and government. With knowledge, you'll have a better idea of what you're getting yourself into before you sign on the dotted line.

Let's take a look at each party of a typical industrial relation in the modern world.

Public Domain

The employee is someone who performs work for an employer. The employee gets certain benefits and returns for performing this work, usually in the form of an agreed amount of money from the employer. There may be other forms of benefits like healthcare, paid leave from work etc. The nature and amount work as well as the benefits in return for work are usually laid out in the form of an agreement, or contract that is mutually agreed upon by both employee and employer. In an ideal situation, the employee would seek maximal benefits for a well-defined set of work or services rendered.

Source: sparklette.net

The employer is usually, but not always, an organization. The employer could also be a person. For example, I may get someone to chaffeur me around instead of driving the car myself. And in return for driving me around, I pay this person a certain amount of money every month. So in this example, the chaffeur is the employee while I am the employer. We see that the main concern for employers is maximal work done at minimal cost. Using the above example, I would, ideally, pay him a buck and have him on 24/7 stand-by, plus car wash & wax every morning. Now, some of you might be sniggering because although I've cited an extreme case, it sounds familiar enough.

Source: Eugene Wallingford

The role of the government in labour relations is to look after the welfare of the people it governs while allowing society to function without hinderance. Of course, the government has certain powers vested to create and enforce legislation on workplace relations. We will immediately realise that it is in the interest of both employees and employers to get the government "on their side". The main concern of any elected government is how it can stay in power. This concern does not apply to governments that do not have to account to its people (i.e. absolute monarchs, dictators, despots, election-riggers etc). Accountable governments, therefore, will strive to create an environment where employee rights are resepected, implement generous (i.e. low) corporate tax policies and have enough in its pockets to fund everyday running of the state so that everyone's happy and will vote for it in the next elections.

We'll look at employment contracts next...

Change (or not)

So we're all waiting with bated breath. While the global balance of power slowly shifts from the West to BRICs, we may see a non-White or female assuming the mantle of Most Powerful Person in the world.


Source: seattlepi.com

Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

Indeed...

Ventricular ectopics

Adrenaline-induced ventricular ectopics.


Public domain

Damn uncomfortable feeling.

I need a break from everything.

Girls (and boys) just wanna have fun

My mother says, "When you gonna live your life right?"
Oh, mother, dear,
We're not the fortunate ones,
And girls,
They wanna have fun.

Someone passed me the YouTube link to a song from not-so-long ago.

As a pimply boy, I got teased quite a lot for listening to Cyndi Lauper's songs. Punk had arrived in Singapore a few years before. It was also the era of flashy clothes and Centrepoint Kids. Going to a "good" school, it wasn't easy being different from others, especially if that difference was perceived with a negative tint.


Photo: www.cyndilauper.com

I had an oppressive childhood and that is the main contributing factor to my liking for anything anti-establishment. The question that's constantly in my mind is, "Why can't you leave me alone to do my things?"

And I must add that the best thing that happened to me is being married to Wifey. I can get away with a lot of things with her. Heck, I even envision Faith dressing up like Cyndi Lauper when she grows up. Now THAT would be interesting...

Feeling airheaded

Source: www.apple.com

I want!

The passing of a legend

Sir Edmund Hillary
20 July 1919 - 11 January 2008

Farewell to a Beekeeper, Mountaineer and Sherpa Friend

My inner Nineveh

You know you are working too hard when you have no other aspirations except to see the day through.

No wonder everyone's bereft of a soul that dreams.


Source: The Project Gutenberg

Where there is no vision, the people perish

What is my dream?

Western rubble = Eastern treasure

"Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!"
"No one has the intention to erect a wall!"

-Walter Ulbricht, leader of East Germany
June 15, 1961
Two months before construction of the Berlin Wall

So 1984-ville has decided to install a piece of the Berlin Wall in one of its parks. It wasn't that long ago that Communism in Eastern Europe came to an end, along with it the Cold War and oppression of the common man. The Berlin Wall became a symbol of this oppression.

Erected in August 1961 by the East German communist government, under pressure from the Soviet Union, to stem the tide of defectors crossing into West Germany, it came to signify the attempt by rulers to control the ruled, keeping freedom out and forming the fences of a literal and figurative prison. An explicit shoot-to-kill policy was adopted by the East German government on anyone trying to flee westward and about 200 East Germans are known to have died for a chance at freedom.



A piece of history? Maybe. But art? Blood was shed over it. It is a symbol of how badly human beings treat one another. Communism as a political system might be in disfavour now but the threats to freedom remain. When you see kids skateboard past the wall, tell them about the blood and tears that used to bathe it.

Lest we forget.

Every morning

O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days

-The Bible

It's been a long while since I woke up glad. I think not since school days. The turning point came when I was conscripted into the army. It was dreadful with each waking and the shadow of it, together with the subsequent years in the hospitals have never really disappeared.

Help me be glad with my days.


Photo credit: www.the-wallpaper.net