odysseus

Nostalgia

A videotape viewing this morning. Fragments of a life long gone by. A concert by a lovely red-head girl. A violin then alive with music and passion that now has not left its case for years.

On the first row, an old man delights at the music made by this lovely young girl. A picture of beauty, grace, and a sense of style uncanny for her age. So young, yet, through her music-making, already so knowing of life's joys and sorrows.

The old man knows that he does not have much time left, that his cancer will soon extinguish his passion for life, beauty, reason. But this concert has taken him far from these shadows, in a world where all is harmony, calm and exquisite pleasure.

Men at work in Singapore

Two weeks ago, I played the role of Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock's "Rear Window" ... but I did not discover any crime, I was just taking shots of men at work on the building they are demolishing.

Slowly, slowly this building is going down, and these men were performing the tricky work of disassembling the very scaffolding on which they stand, which supports the dirty blue tarpaulin stretched around the building to prevent the dust from flying around the neighborhood.

A piece of scaffolding just removed is about to be dropped by the man holding it. I was glad to see that these construction workers were secured by a rope. It is not always true on construction sites in countries less advanced than Singapore. I could see that this safety measure slows their work down, as they have to adjust the rope and move it around when they go from place to place on the scaffolding.

Sometimes, on my way back from the office, I see these dark-skinned men sitting on the street exhausted after a long day of hard work, waiting for their transportation. You often see in the streets of Singapore these men from South India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, sitting on open flat-bed trucks as they are being ferried back and forth between construction sites and the dormitories where they live during the construction projects.

Has slavery really been abolished? At least these men get paid, and one likes to think that they have chosen this work, that they are making a lot more money here in Singapore than they would staying in their home countries where jobs are scarce, and that they send it back home to support their families.

But once in a while, among his peers on a flat-bed truck, I see a man with a noble face, accented by an aquiline nose and fiery eyes under a fierce brow and a dark mane, and lean and sinuous muscles bulging under a ragged T-shirt and I wonder: Is this the Spartacus who will rally his companions in a revolt against their soft-bellied masters who exploit their labor?

The Maid and the Mother

From my bedroom window, on a sunny morning a couple of weeks ago, I could see a woman feeding an infant at a table near the pool of the hotel next door. "Is she the mother or the maid?" I asked myself.

A few minutes later, I got my answer and I watched the scene for a while.

The mother had come and taken a seat at the table. She seemed absorbed in her thoughts, not once getting close to her child for a hug or a kiss, or taking over from the maid the task of feeding her own child.

Such a scene would be surprising in the West, but not in Singapore. Domestic help is widely available and inexpensive, as poor women from neighboring Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, the Philippines) flock to wealthy Singapore in search of work to support their families back home. Even middle class families in Singapore can afford to hire a maid, sometimes even two.

Since this scene took place at a hotel, the mother may not be from Singapore, but many Singaporean women would behave this way. It is a common scene to see a woman or a couple walking down the aisles of the supermarket, with a couple of maids in tow, one pushing a child in a stroller and the other a cart full of groceries.

A Singaporean doctor I know rails against women in Singapore for being lazy and incapable of doing anything around the house, so used have they become to be surrounded by help. They do not even cook or take care of their children, since the maids can do that too.

Mornington Peninsula

Au sud de Melbourne,
Une plage, immaculée,
Par des falaises encerclée;
Au pied d'une falaise, sur un rocher,
Un gateau d'algues s'est echoué,
Portant ses grappes de crustacés.

Think Titans

It was perhaps three or four months ago on a Sunday afternoon and I was browsing in the huge Kinokuniya store, one of my favorite places in Singapore and a bookstore that has no equal in the world that I know of in terms of size, layout and feel.

I suddenly noticed a huge poster which struck me because of its title in large white letters superimposed on the photographs of famous people: "THINK TITANS".

"Think Titans" has a positive connotation. Who wouldn't want to be known as a "Think Titan"? It connotes extraordinary intelligence, drive, leadership, and the ability to use those advantages to achieve great things, that will remain as durable testimony of human ability. The poster had a wide-ranging scope for this label, which it explained further by listing categories as a frieze around the edges: Builders and Titans, Scientists and Thinkers, Leaders and Revolutionaries. The poster was attractive and it had a graphic quality fitting the subject which it was designed to honour.

But I was appalled to see Adolph Hitler on the second row. How can this man be labelled as a Think Titan? I was so outraged that I stopped one of the store's staff walking by me, a young Chinese woman, attracted her attention to the poster and asked her if she recognized that man and knew what he had done. She looked at the poster and gave me a puzzled look: she did not know. My respect for the Singaporean education system was suddenly diminished: how can any one old enough to have gone to high school not know about Adolph Hitler?

I asked for a manager so that I could lodge a protest against a poster designed as an ad for the store that glorifies such a man. No one could be found. I gave up but took a picture of the poster to protest against it in my blog.

Among the figures I recognize in this poster, there is another one whose presence I find highly questionable: Mao Tse Tung. His misguided policies resulted in at least as many millions of deaths as can be attributed to the monster next to him.

The others all merit, in their own ways, the label of this poster. On the first row Leo Tolstoy (it looks like him, but I am not sure), Albert Einstein, Spethen Hawkings and Sigmund Freud certainly are "Think Titans" in their own literary or scientific field.

The second row, marred by the presence of the two political leaders I already commented upon, is redeemed by Richard Feynman and Mahatma Gandhi.

Of the three men I recognize on the third row, Winston Churchill, Lee Kuan Yew and Nelson Mandela, I would only say that the second one was almost obligatory ... We are in Singapore after all. I would not, I think, call Lee Kuan Yew a "Think Titan", but he is the founder of Singapore, and the animating force of its success, and this is a great achievement. My main issue with him is his rejection of democracy's universal appeal. This is why he does not rank nearly as high in my Pantheon of Titans as his neighbour in this poster, Winston Churchill, who towers over him for his uncompromising stand against the two great political diseases of the 20th century, fascism and communism, which threatened the spread of democracy and were responsible for so much human misery.

I recognize only two men on the last row: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Think Titans? I believe that, on balance, they deserve the label, for having created two great high tech companies that have changed forever the way we work, think and play.

Life in the fast lane

The day after playing at being a race-car driver in Dubai, I got to see how the pros do it, as I was invited to witness the F-1 Grand Prix in Bahrain. It was spectacular ... not so much for the race itself ... whose conclusion was known almost from the start, with the two Ferrari cars taking the lead and never letting it go, but for the beauties to be seen near the pit stands just before the race began.

First and foremost ... the Kingfisher Girls. Vijay Mallya made a fortune in beer in India, and then started an airline, Kingfisher Airline, for which, it is said, he personally selects the stewardesses, and I can attest, after flying that airline in India a couple of times, that he has excellent taste. The four girls delegated to Bahrain with the India Force team, sponsored by Vijay, must undeniably be among the most beautiful of them all.

Then, not to be outdone, the stewardesses of Gulf Air, the national airline and major sponsor of the event.

And those two beauties who are getting their picture taken in front of the BMW pit garage must be supermodels ... perhaps the girlfriends of the BMW race drivers ... Life in the fast lane ... driving fast cars and fast women ...