Categories
ranting

A new journey

The preparations are almost done.

The invitations have been sent.

I’m ready.

I’ve always wanted to be married. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s a societal norm that I absorbed at some point. Maybe it’s because I want kids and when I was growing up the kids who did not have two married parents were ‘different.’ Of course this was the hight of the divorce culture in the US: the mid-80’s. For whatever reason I have thought of marriage several times over the years. I was never really ready but I knew I wanted to be married. Last December I decided I had someone I wanted to hang on to for the rest of my life.

It’s been a year since I gave away a rock and now the final days are ticking away before the wedding. I’m excited an nervous. I don’t expect anything material to change in my live once Candice and I are married but hopefully our love will continue to grow and we will become closer over the many years.

Life is a long journey, I’ve come from Charlottesville to London and now to Singapore. Along the way I have met many friends and loves and it is not without much thought that I now enter into marriage. From now the journey is no longer mine but ours, mine and Candice’s, and I look forward to all the future has to offer us and a long journey.

Every society on earth has some form of marriage I believe and it must server some deep rooted biological and psychological need and it is great that it also such a great joy. Though nothing material will change in my life when I say the words and sign the paper but I expect that in a very real sense everything will change. I can’t wait.

In the last few days before our wedding I won’t be bothered to record my life here but before I sign off for the next few weeks or month I wanted to say here, for everyone that I am ready, that I am in love and that I look forward to waking up next to my wife everyday for the rest of my life and to get lost in her eyes, in her smile and in her laugh.

I love you Babe.

Categories
ranting

Best description of Singapore… ever.

Via S██████’s Livejournal [livejournal.com] I just read the best description of Singapore ever. Don’t let the fact that it was published in 1993 dissuade you from reading it: other then the to newspaper articles referenced being from ’93 the article could have been written yesterday.

Here’s a sample:

Singapore is a relentlessly G-rated experience, micromanaged by a state that has the look and feel of a very large corporation. If IBM had ever bothered to actually possess a physical country, that country might have had a lot in common with Singapore. There’s a certain white-shirted constraint, an absolute humorlessness in the way Singapore Ltd. operates; conformity here is the prime directive, and the fuzzier brands of creativity are in extremely short supply.

And better…

The local papers, including one curiously denatured tabloid, New Paper, are essentially organs of the state, instruments of only the most desirable propagation. This ceaseless boosterism, in the service of order, health, prosperity, and the Singaporean way, quickly induces a species of low-key Orwellian dread. (The feeling that Big Brother is coming at you from behind a happy face does nothing to alleviate this.) It would be possible, certainly, to live in Singapore and remain largely in touch with what was happening elsewhere. Only certain tonalities would be muted, or tuned out entirely, if possible. . . .

I have a feeling this issue of Wired was not on sale in Singapore and thought some things have changed (you can get Cosmo here now. You can even watch bar-top dancing in some pubs) most of this article is very applicable to life here in Singapore.

Most interesting is this article actually pre-dates the Micheal Fay incident!

Read on: Disneyland with the Death Penalty [Wired.com].

Categories
ranting

A Life Well Lived

A few weeks a go my Grandfather passed away. At 84 years old he lived a full life and he did not suffer from any long pain before he died so I feel no agony, sorry that a great man is gone and grief that a loved one is no longer around, but no agony or pain.

My grandfather did indeed live a full life. He was an important figure in the community he lived in and almost everyone who knew him was touched by him in some way.

I don’t know a lot about my grandfathers life, I wish I had lived closer to him so I would know more –I wish I lived closer to my mothers parents for the same reason. But my parents grew up far from each other, Alabama and Minnesota are, within America about as far away both physically and culturally as you could get 50 years ago. In the end my family ended up in Virginia, about as far from my fathers parents as from my mothers.

What I do know about my fathers father is that he started life in rural Mississippi somewhere near Jackson. His father was an engineer on the railroad. My grandpa Beggerly grew up in a poor part of America during the Great Depression.

One story about grandpa Beggerly’s childhood that I have heard and was recently reminded of was how he earned money from his carvings. He would carve a tiny monkey from the heart of a peach pit and his father would sell the carving for a dollar on the trains. The heart of a peach pit is nearly rock hard and only about a quarter of an inch long. Whittling, or carving, is a rare skill these days and I can hardly imagine the patience, determination and skill required to complete the task of carving a monkey from a peach pit. It speaks of a lost time and a simpler life and of the character of my grandfather.

My grandfather joined the Merchant Marines at some point, I think before World War II but I am not sure. I know he learned a great deal about engineering, mechanical and electrical and many other things during his training in the Merchant Marines. Training that he would use over and over again.

Soon after finishing his training for the Merchant Marines my grandfather sailed acorss the North Atlantic to join the Allied forces in Europe. I only have bits an peices of stories at this point but I believe he took part in Operation Overlord and the D-Day landings as an Engineer for the Navy. I do know that after the liberation of Amsterdam my grandfather spent much time in the Netherlands repairing Navy ships.

After the war ended my grandfather was in Amsterdam for some time. Sometime after the war my grandfather, and I suppose many other men who served in the Netherlands, were invited to meet the Queen of the Netherlands. I don’t know the details about the meeting but I know my grandfather saved a bottle of wine presented to him by the Queen for the rest of his life.

I last saw grandpa Beggerly just before I came to Singapore in August 2004. I made the trip especially to see him, I had not been on vacation with my family for years. Knowing his health was beginning to fail him and that I might never get to see him alive again. While I have heard many of the stories above before much of my recollection of them is based on my last visit with my grandfather. Sitting under the oak tree in from of his house we all listened his stories and his politics and some of his stories again.

Unfortunately I was right about never seeing grandpa again.

Looking for information on carving peach pits online I came across this story, interestingly it’s also about loosing someone, a father in this case:

“Reflections on a Peach-Pit Monkey”, by Sam Keene, from the book Dancing with God:

“Once upon a time when there were still Indians, Gypsies, bears, and bad men in the woods of Tennessee where I played and, more important still, there was no death, a promise was made to me. One endless summer afternoon my father sat in the eternal shade of a peach tree, carving on a seed he had picked up. With increasing excitement and covetousness I watched while, using a skill common to all omnipotent creators, he fashioned a small monkey out of the seed. If only I could have it, I would possess a treasure which could not be matched in the whole cosmopolitan town of Maryville! What status, what identity, I would achieve by owning such a curio! Finally I marshaled my nerve and asked if I might have the monkey when it was finished (on the sixth day of creation). My father replied, “This one is for your mother, but I will carve you one someday.”

“Days passed, and then weeks, and, finally, years, and the someday on which I was to receive the monkey did not arrive. In truth, I forgot all about the peach-pit monkey. Life in the ambience of my father was exciting, secure, and colorful. He did all of those things for his children a father can do, not the least of which was merely delighting in their existence. One of the lasting tokens I retained of the measure of his dignity and courage was the manner in which, with emphysema sapping his energy and eroding his future, he continued to wonder, to struggle, and to grow.

“In the pure air and dry heat of an Arizona afternoon on the summer before the death of God, my father and I sat under a juniper tree. I listened as he wrestled with the task of taking the measure of his success and failure in life. There came a moment of silence that cried out for testimony. Suddenly I remembered the peach-seed monkey, and I heard the right words coming from myself to fill the silence: ‘In all that is important you never failed me. With one exception, you kept the promises you made to me – you never carved me that peach-seed monkey’.

“Not long after this conversation I received a small package in the mail. In it was a peach-seed-monkey and a note which said: ‘Here is the monkey I promised you. You will notice that I broke one leg and had to repair it with glue. I am sorry I didn’t have time to carve a perfect one’.

“Two weeks later my father died. He died only at the end of his life.” [1]

[1] taken from “In Memoriam” from the Harvard Radcliff, http://www.harvardradcliffe1956.com/memoriam.html as I cannot find a reference to the book it may be misquoted.

Categories
ranting

Poke it with a stick?

“The public wants us to have mastered the problem of dealing with asteroids. So being able to have astronauts go out there and sort of poke one with a stick would be scientifically valuable as well as demonstrate human capabilities.” Article [guardian.co.uk]

Categories
ranting

Where Laptops Should not be Taken

I’ve seen people driving and talking on their cell phone. I’ve seen people driving and typing on their blackberry. I’ve heard people in the restroom talking on their cell phone. I’ve seen guys typing on their blackberry in the restroom. But today I saw a guy standing in the rest room taking a piss and typing on his laptop with one hand while holding it with the other.

I can’t believe there is anything in the world so important that one needs to type on their laptop while taking a piss at a urinal.