Category: ranting

I just experienced what I can only be described as a ‘Chinese fire drill.’ I know that that might not be a PC term but that’s what it was. Apparently every building here needs to do regular fire drills because; Singapore is a nanny state.

So anyway, at 11 o’clock this morning the fire alarm goes off and none of us move—it goes off all the time and it’s not the most effective fire alarm. It’s like the boy who cried ‘wolf!’ We all ignore it now and it is ignorable because it’s not very loud like the one we have back in the US office which will drive you out of the building with it’s skull splitting squeal.

Since none of us had any plans to leave the not-so-burring building someone had to come through and remind us all that it is a regulation and we have to leave and oh, by the way, it is a planned fire drill not a malfunction in the alarm system this time. So we all march down the nine flights of stairs and walk around the front of the building and wow, it’s a party!

There were neat little numbers hanging up so everyone could congregate by which floor their office was on. They even provided drinks and there were people walking around with megaphones. And they provided entertainment, well sort of. They burned a bunch of trash in a bin and demonstrated how to use a fire extinguisher—over and over again.

After about thirty minutes—and just before it started to rain—they let us back in to the building. So of course it took another 20 minutes to get back to the office as the whole building was trying to take the lift at once. And now some fire marshal can go back and put a tic in the ‘Chinese fire drill’ box for our building and we can work for another year before they teach us to use a fire extinguisher again.

Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly.

Confucius

I don’t want to rush things, to move to fast, to jeopardize the long term. I understand the meaning of Confucius’ saying. But at the same time…

I have rushed into things before despite telling myself to slow down, to move deliberately and to think logically. Yet logic has little, if anything, to do with the most fundamental of life’s great mysteries. No, I can’t say that found that one greatest of things. I don’t know, I have only just met this person, I am just getting to know them but everything about them is just right.

Despite the best efforts to take time and do things right my logical mind finds itself yelling into the wind, along for the ride as the illogical parts of my being venture headlong into the unknown. It’s not a bad feeling; in fact it is a wonderful feeling. My logical mind working to make sure I do not mess things up by rushing too fast, helping to steer the course while my emotional mind believes nothing can go wrong and marches ever forward indifferent to any obstacles. The obstacles loom large but they can be dealt with and it is always easier to deal with great challenges with someone beside you than on your own.

Spent the whole weekend either on the phone with or out with someone. Not the someone who is mentioned below—never heard from them. But someone new. Someone interesting. Maybe I’ll speak more about it later, now it is enough to say I had a good weekend, and look forward to spend more time with this person. :)

I talked to Okie Chinco Chan [ jiminjapan.com ]the other day and we are going to try to plan a trip for China this spring. I looked for guided tour type trips but they cost upwards for $4000—without airfare! So we are reading up on our guidebooks and plotting an assult. Beijing to Hong Kong? Or Hong Kong to Beijing? You know it’s cold as crap in Beijing in March, and hot as hell in Hong Kong. How do you pack for something like that? Anyway, I also bought the Rosetta Stone [ rosettastone.com ] Mandarin Chinese language course. We’ll see if I have the mental capacity and sanity to learn a little Chinese before I land there… I already got the important stuff down: Wô yào yī gè nǚ rén! (all kinds of funky chars there with strange accent marks and such… may not display correctly…) Means “I want a woman” though I met one the other night… we’ll see if she calls this Saturday. And lets see how many people jump on that line :)

The ‘Idol’ phenomenon has hit Singapore hard. It’s now down to the last two contestants. I neither know nor care which can sing better. I have no interest in the ‘Idol’ franchise. I lived in England when the first Pop Idol aired and the sick voyeuristic orgy that it was made me question the sanity of the British people. Then I moved back to America and it followed me! I lived through two incarnations of the bad songs. The utter hysteria of the people who become addicted to this show served to confirm my ‘take the safety labels off and see if the problem fixes itself’ attitude towards American intelligence. Now I come to Singapore—half way around the world and low and fucking behold, Singapore Idol. It’s a bunch of pre-teen girls wetting their panties over a couple of guys who would not touch them as they have the wrong plumbing.

But enough bitching about Idol, I just don’t get it. I mean I like to a good train wreck as much as the next person, but I just don’t get it. The reason I do find the Singapore Idol interesting is that the final vote is being take very seriously. And it has little to nothing to do with the abilities of the two contestants to sing. It’s all about looks, but not because the girls find one guy more attractive than the other. No, it has to do with looks because it’s all about racism. See one of the contestants is of Chinese heritage and the other is Malay.

It really is that bad. Apparently there are people planning to spend a hundred plus dollars on voting for the candidate who shares their ethnicity. At fifty cents a vote that’s a deep seeded racism.

Most people think that America is racist. And it is. But one thing I have learned form living abroad and traveling is that America is far from the most racist nation. In fact we are probably near the bottom of the pile. The big difference is that there is some sort of dialog in America regarding race relations. We fought a war that had a lot to do with racism and we spent another hundred years acting openly racist. Now we still have a long way to go but there is a dialog, muted as it might be.

America has a built in advantage when it comes to racism: the melting pot. The fact that we are almost all mutts, that after the first few generations immigrants tend to acculturate, has helped long-term racism. I am not saying that racism is dead in the US—far from it. What I am saying is that America is far ahead of the rest of the world in regards to racism. It’s hard to explain without being in another society and observing it, but trust me; most of the world is racist, many of them have just never met someone of another race.