confusion

Everyone window shops, even when you’re in a relationship you window shop, it’s human nature. Being attached does not change the fact that we all have wondering eyes and we like to look at beautiful things. We like to imagine what could be—to fantasize. If you suppress this natural behavior I believe you doom your relationship. Window shopping is necessary if the relationship is to be healthy.

What I find interesting is that how I window shop changes depending on my personal life. When I am single and not obsesed with some new girl or pinning over some lost love, I look at girls and pick out the things that make the girl desirable: the color of her eyes, the shape of her hips or other, cruder thoughts. I don’t notice the things that may not fit into my plutonic ideal of a beautiful woman. I only see the desirable.

When I am in a relationship that is healthy and I am happy I find that I still look at all the other girls, sometimes it’s the same girls that I looked at when I was single but I am more critical, looking for things that I can say are not as good as my love: this girls’ hair is not as nice, her nose is not as cute or maybe she’s too much taller, too much shorter, fatter, thinner. I seek out those qualities that are not the same, to which I can say ‘my girlfriend is better because…’

I also find that I do this when I am pursuing a girl or when I just have a crush on her. She, as with the girlfriend, becomes the basis for all measurements of other women. And her features, her measurements are always better than the other woman—because I do not compare the features where she might not be better than the others.

The features which get compared don’t have to be physical. My girls’ car is better, or maybe she has an accent that I like more. I can find really petty things, even stereotypes about race or social status.

Another interesting part of this is when the ruler changes from one girl to another. I begin to find fault with the old ruler. Notice things that went unnoticed before; speech patterns that suddenly become annoying. Attitudes that start to offend whereas they were once accepted. Little things I didn’t notice before now become big annoyances.

There is another situation: the manic ruler. When a relationship has gone bad but I’m still in the relationship. Where one day your lover is always the better ruler and the next the stranger on the street looks better.

I’ve experienced all of these in the past. The manic ruler drove me crazy for a year and eventually drove me out of C’ville. Leaving C’ville in turn started me down the roads that led, eventually, to Singapore. And now I find myself using a new ruler to judge the women I see on the street here in Singapore.

27 times around the sun now since I got here…

$350 million is a big number. That is how much the United States has ‘so far pledged’ in aid to the peoples and nations affected by the Boxing Day quake and tsunami [ wikipedia.org ]. $350 million is a big a number, but $500 million is bigger—that’s how much Japan has pledged.

$80 billion is a bigger number. That’s how much the ‘liberation of Iraq’ was supposed to cost—no point in discussing how much it actually cost. It’s a disgrace. And Collin Powell has the audacity to say that our paltry $350 million was “an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action.”

I guess it’s a good thing that the tradition in America is not of government charity but private charity. Hopefully the private donation by truly generous Americans who do have values will far out weigh the required generosity of the government. Have you given any money? Here are a few places you can donate if you have not…

• Action Against Hunger
• ReliefWeb
• American Red Cross (via Amazon)
• American Jewish World Service
• BAPS Care International
• CARE
• Direct Relief International
• GOAL
• Habitat for Humanity International
• International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
• Islamic Relief Worldwide
• Karuna Trust
• Network for Good
• Oxfam International (US page)
• Sarvodaya
• Save the Children
• UNICEF (US page)
• World Food Programme (UN)
• World Vision

The only worlds to describe the scope of the damage and the loss of life associated with the earthquake and tsunami is biblical just look at the death tolls [ wikipedia.org ]. Remember that these numbers are still changing and they don’t include those who will die from lack of safe drinking water or proper medical treatment over the next few months.

The fall out for the few minutes of the earth shaking will take years to be fully realized. We will never know the true number of people affected because most of the affected areas are mired in absolute poverty. Whole villages were erased from the face of the earth in a few moments.

If you want to see a small sample of the power of the waves take a look at a few of the videos [ asiantsunamivideos.com ] that were taken by tourists.

There was no killer wave here in Singapore and luckily I know no one I know was directly affected by the disasters. One person I know in the region checked out of his beachside hotel less than an hour before the tsunami hit—there is nothing left of the town he was staying in but he is ok.

I have been guilty lately of more or less completely ignoring my friends. I have received few emails from them, and the time distance means I don’t get calls—not to mention the fact that I am not positive I ever sent them my Singapore phone number. I can blame some of this on a number of things, like the amount of hours I have been working, or 13 hour time difference; in fact I don’t even talk to my mother very often because of that. But saying those things would not be the truth. In reality I have just been lazy about contacting people.

It’s easy to be lazy about calling or writing people. When I am at work I am often swamped by work and when I am not swamped by work I find myself too burnt to write letters to friends. I meant to send postcards to many people before Christmas, to say happy holidays to those who celebrate and to just say hello to those who don’t. To inform all of my friends wherever they are in the world that I do still think of them.

But I didn’t

I just didn’t get to it. I picked up post cards at a small shop the other day but thought; “I’ll get them on my way back out, I don’t want to carry the bag around all afternoon.” And that has been the extent of my apathy to writing postcards. This apathy has also extended to writing email of late. I have not send replies to the few emails I have gotten. I am totally out of touch.

It’s bad really. I don’t want to lose these people as friends; I don’t want to lose contact with them. I have been friends with them across great distances before so this is nothing new. I need to get myself back in control of my time. I have found someone to share much of my time with here but I need to put a little more structure in my time both at work and at fun. I will start today by sending those I have neglected a short message to say I am still alive. Consider this a sort of pre-new years resolution: I will make more of an effort to keep in touch with those close to me, I will not ignore the relationships that are important to me, be they near or far. I will be a good friend.

My behavior has been inexcusable.

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.