news

the big news: Radovan is PREGNANT! (and engaged, although not necessarily in that order)

Only fly Northwest if you absolutely have to, i.e. on pain of death. Especially when you have a 12 hour flight from Tokyo to Detroit with NO personal screen for in-flight entertainment. How about that eh?! Anyway spent most of the time sleeping like a hound dog, with jaw open and no-doubt drool on my left shoulder.

Am reading Identity and Violence by Amartya Sen which so far talks about the plurality of identities that we all possess, but that violence is normally bred on mono-definitions of identity. He quotes Matthew Arnold in “Dover Beach”, saying that

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Back at school where it seems like the past six weeks were six minutes. Am debating between taking a class on US foreign policy or Development Politics and am already exhausted. Plus I was banned from registration because I still haven't gotten my third and final Hepatitis B immunization. Sigh.

sydney sun

Am in sun-kissed Sydney right now. I bet that if you did a survey of sun rays per cubic foot per year of all OECD countries Sydney would win. (That’s a lifestyle choice ladies and gentlemen). I’m visiting my very professional kick-ass sister who lives in some apartment throwback to 1930s Spain with terracotta tiles, wrought iron and whitewashed walls glistening in the sun, sleeping for 14 hours (I know! But the marathon of papers- I was doing them on the plane, during the 9 hour stopover in Perth at my aunt’s house, then on the plane again, and then in the morning when I arrived at Sydney. In total I wrote 55 pages in like 4.5 days. Jeezus. I am never waiting until the goddamn last moment again. In addition, PEOPLE! YOU LET ME DOWN! I asked if someone could verify my time calculations and they were WRONG! I had to hand in a paper on midnight on jan 15, except I thought it was Jan 16 and then when I handed it in on Jan 16, I realized my mistake and howled and groveled at my teacher’s feet and was generally prostrate because I cannot afford to be penalized but then he emailed me back today and said it was okay and not a problem and so the sun shone again) eating holiday-amounts, bought Shalimar the Clown from Mr. Martin Smith’s Bookstore in Bondi which had quite an excellent collection unexpectedly, and am about to read it, working on a business plan for the Fletcher competition due on the 22nd and so was conference-calling this morning with A and N and then just generally feeling rather shattered and excited at the same time). I’ve realized I can’t be on holiday without doing something. I always get impatient. ANYWAY. Oooh the holiday is going to end in 9 days and it can’t, it really can’t because when I get back I’m going to have loads of work to do and I just can’t. I really can’t. Everybody better clear their schedules when I get back to Singapore coz you won’t be seeing me for some time peeps.
Also, did you know that this is my second visit to the country of my nationality in 14 years? Something’s gotta give. I am seriously thinking about taking up Sri Lankan citizenship people, if I can get over the ideological objections. I was born Sri Lankan, and very likely, I’ll die Sri Lankan too.

research

Google Scholar is a shockingly useful research tool and throws up all manner of tangential, obscure interesting issues and I spend half my time following these links, in the true manner of a researcher, a Victorian explorer whose journey is the destination, who emerges out of the brush quite incidentally with skulls and totem poles and complete amnesia about his final (research) destination), and while quite fascinating, I feel then somehow compelled to include it in my paper, strange surmisings about old villages, even though it has little to no relevance to my actual paper. cf. this: written in 1908 about Sri Lanka.

As on the summit of Adam’s Peak, where all religions meet without rancour, so at Madhu in the Wanni do men and women of many creeds find some common denominator which reduces their divergent faiths to hopes possessed by all: and in the wilderness of this old border land of many wars, they find a place of truce

intro.

Imagining a just peace in Sri Lanka requires one to think outside of traditional approaches that remain in their silos e.g. those of health, education, advocacy, military, and peace activism. I argue that for too long we have relied on the dominant political actors, the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) and the Government of Sri Lanka (GosL) to determine the future of the island. While their participation is necessary in any outcome, I argue that a new vision must look at ways of mobilizing other stakeholders and promoting grassroots led change that will pressure these actors to act in the best interests of their people. But increasing population activism appropriately (without a descent into further demagoguery and populism) requires meaningful changes in their structural conditions as well as the articulation of a clear vision of a shared future. No one can escape the importance of income, health and wealth and the positive moral consequences of economic growth. Combining such a targeted, bipartisan economic program with conflict transformation initiatives and the beginnings of a truth and reconciliation process, with or without war on the ground, is the most realistic way forward

the last minute.

I. Will. Never. Wait. Until. The. Last. Moment. Again.

Ever.

Am twitching at the computer like a corpse, typing out 20 pages of drivel on a paper that is due tomorrow, but I am flying tomorrow you see, and besides, I have ANOTHER paper due tomorrow as well, and oh, none of it is looking very well. Sigh.

time diffs

The World Time Clock has been quite useful in discovering the difference between time zones. Paper 1 is due at 3pm Boston time on the 16 Jan. This means it is due at 7am on 17th Jan (Sydney time) or 4am 17th Jan (Singapore time). At both these times I will be in the air. Paper 2 is due at 23:59 on Tuesday 16th Jan/Wed 17th Jan and that means it is due at 12:59pm 17th Jan in Singapore and 3:59pm Jan 17th in Sydney.

Can someone please tell me if I screwed that up? Every last minute counts. Its so boring to have papers due while being on holiday

a christmas letter

"Dear friends. We are getting older but are in fairly good shape and moving forward insofar as we can tell. We still drink strong coffee and read the paper and drive the same old cars. We plan to go to Norway next summer. We think that this war is an unmitigated disaster that will wind up costing a trillion dollars and we worry for our country. Our child enjoys her new school and is making friends. She was a horsie in the church Christmas pageant and hunkered down beside the manger and seemed to be singing when she was supposed to. We go on working and hope to be adequate to the challenges of the coming year but are by no means confident. It's winter. God is around here somewhere but does not appear to be guiding our government at the moment. Nonetheless we persist. We see kindness all around us and bravery and we are cheered by the good humor of young people. The crabapple tree over the driveway is bare, but we have a memory of pink blossoms and expect them to return. God bless you all."
Garrison Keillor- A Prairie Home Companion

Journalistic Independence

How important is it? Should the journalist record the facts (even while acknowledging that merely choosing which facts to report involves editorial discretion and therefore introduces some sort of bias) or should the journalist report in a bent in accordance with her paper's owners (as the editor will typically slash a journalist's piece in such a fashion if he too follows such a code). Or should she follow her own sets of morals and outrage and implant her lens on a story told to millions, shaping millions' point of view? The risks of that are of course high. Like Robert Fisk, who said that "It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.” and that "Tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the "liberating" kind"; one faces discrimination by readers and by other members of the Establishment. For example Dumeetha Luthra of the BBC who reports in Sri Lanka about Sri Lanka (and who is Indian and not Sri Lankan) has been accused of reporting bias in favour of the Tamils and now rumours abound that the young lady is seeing someone Tamil in Colombo. She has received so much flak from the country that the BBC has posted her elsewhere. Truth?
"There is no such thing as truth here, there are only opinions", Anil's Ghost

pain!

Wah. My face still ting-ling one ok! Wa leow! Went for facial today: the woman dig dig, I pain, crying somemore. Cannot tahan! Next time, going to one with no extraction hor. Wah! Die Already!

another's but our's

charcoal musings II

As I look out of the window, the Lady of Lourdes (requirement for a saint- something magical must be done to be canonized. O Catholic Shenanigans) disappears to be replaced by something else, a muggy haze cut through by brilliant burning sun-rays, steam rising from badly-potholed asphalt melting in the heat, autorickshaws swerving heroically in the face of honking lorry drivers, ubiquitous white vans (synonymous with dread), ancient Ambassadors with windows permanently stuck down and civil servants stuck inside wilting valiantly in the gridlocked heat anxious to punch in their time cards, Galle Road merchants parked on stools observing, chador-ed Muslim women moving in packs giggling and laughing gutturally, schoolgirls clad in white, plaits swinging with unconsciously sensual walks, (a pack of boys not far behind self-conscious), Colombo women clad in suits and short skirts with incongrous Japanese hair as is the fashion now, beleaguered traffic policemen waiting to go off on lunch breaks, fruit and fish stalls spilling out onto the main Galle thoroughfare, cows meandering chewing at garbage, wheelbarrows piled high with glistening rambutan and mangosteen, 5 rupees each, billboards of Rajapakse (President) and Muralitharan (cricketing star) threatening to crumble down from cheap scaffolding and always the scent of the Pacific wafting over Colombo, doing strange things to its insides, rotting old houses from damp, turning all the rules upside down.

I remember too, driving along the same road the day after Rajapakse won the election. Every store was shuttered down and the streets were empty and an ill wind blew. There could not have been more than 3 cars on the main road. Checkpoints abounded, manned by grim-faced soldiers, boys of not more than 19 or 20 who used to flirt with us but now noted impassively the birthplace on my passport. Jaffna, Sri Lanka. The road deserted, the schools shut down in fear of communal riots predicted to descend in the aftermath of the election of a hardline son of the south. The eerie silence was punctuated by a car backfiring and we paused, silently, heart beating violently, for was this the start of the bombings?

"You and then the Americans converted us. With your missionary rules. And Indian soldiers wasted their lives as heroes so that they could be pukkah. You had wars like cricket. How did you fool us into this?" Kip, in the English Patient.

charcoal musings

Is it rather fatuous to write on the importance of com(passion)? in my time here both amongst friends and strangers, I have witnessed now so many instances of intolerance and irritation, an unconscious sense of class-based arrogance towards others, that it is disturbing to realize that perhaps as we age, and revert towards a conservative isolationist stance as we were no doubt taught to by the generation above us, that we perpetuate the same structures that we once wanted to demolish. Everyone lives in boxes here but it's sad to see the lack of politeness, manners or just plain nice-ness that I thought people once had. Maybe it's frustration at their own lives or perhaps not, but still.

Onto happier things. What would Manmohan Singh do? Those of you who understand the growth diagnostics of that vast sprawling planet called Amazing India, please email for my paper is due in two days.

The Aristotelian 'golden mean' values moderation essentially versus either extremes. Clearly moderation and I must become better acquainted especially in this new year, for at either end lies only eventual despair.

A Random News Day

The news seems to have thrown up some interesting facts today and I thought I might share it all with you, in my never-ceasing (surely better than neverending- can we put that in a poem somewhere?) procrastination on two papers regarding Indian economic strategy for the next five years and conflict in Sri Lanka.

a) Zubin Mehta a Bombay born conductor became a conductor in Vienna at the age of 22. He is married to a B list movie actress by the name of Nancy Kovack.

b) Prospect magazine is a London-based 'salon' magazine mainly written by centre left writers and pundits. I have a friend who writes for it, but so does Pico Iyer and I have come to the conclusion that any magazine that allows Pico Iyer to write for it, must remain the bastion of a mediocrity. I loathe Pico Iyer.

c) I want to see Shortbus. But I don't think I can, quite.

d) The jury is still out on Nancy Pelosi.

ref

Am in the Lee Kong Chian reference library looking out at Our Lady of Lourdes church, a lovely old, biliously repainted Catholic Church. I am here because I am trying to write business school essays. Why I don't specifically know as yet. One of the essays is totally paralysing. I've already spent two hours staring at the question which revolves around what are the ethical challenges you see in your life ahead. The crappy thing about a new year is that it always involves reflections on the year past and not all of them are pleasant. Anyhoo.

step

Step

The ceremonial funeral structure for a monk
made up of thambali palms, white cloth
is only a vessel, disintegrates

completely as his life.

The ending disappears,replacing itself
with something abstract
as air, a view.

All we'll remember in the last hours
is an afternoon – a lazy lunch
then sleeping together.

Then the disarray of grief.

On the morning of a full moon
in a forest monastery
thirty women in white
meditate on the precepts of the day
until darkness.

They walk those abstract paths
their complete heart
their burning thought focused
on this step, then this step.

In the red brick dusk
of the Sacred Quadrangle,
among holy seven-storey ambitions
where the four Buddhas
of Polonnaruwa
face out to each horizon,
is a lotus pavilion.

Taller than a man
nine lotus stalks of stone
stand solitary in the grass,
pillars that once supported
the floor of another level.

(The sensuous stalk
the sacred flower)

How physical yearning
became permanent.
How desire became devotional
so it held up your house,
your lover's house, the house of your god.

And though it is no longer there,
the pillars once let you step
to a higher room
where there was worship, lighter air.

Michael Ondaatje in Handwriting

sandboarding

If enough of us dream, if a bare thousand of us dream, we can change the world. We can dream it anew! A world in which no cat suffers from the malice of humans. In which no cats are killed by human caprice. A world that we rule.
The visionary cat, in SANDMAN #18: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats"

There is another version of the tale. That is the tale the women tell each other, in their private language that the men-children are not taught, and that the old men are too wise to learn. And in that version of the tale perhaps things happened differently. But then, that is a women's tale, and it is never told to men.
From SANDMAN #9: "Tales in the Sand"

The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's garden, you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths. However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness.
SANDMAN #21: "Season of Mists", episode 0

We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old.
Lady Bast, in SANDMAN #72, part three of "The Wake"

Holiday of the Melon

What a week politically! First the death of Anton Balasingham, which will have far-reaching changes in the political leadership and strategy of the LTTE and now Niyazov, the head of state of Turkmenistan, a brutal dictator by all accounts but a most unexpected death and a very uncertain future ahead for that country

in?

Crossing various seas soon, the atlantic in a few hours and then the pacific. In today's world, if we are to be explorers, we must traverse the frontiers of thought geography, those boundaries where convention stands on one side, and the unproved on the other. And in crossing those frontiers, we become necessarily changed. I know all this and I can't help but go forward, trusting. Are you in or not?

exams

12 more hours exactly until my last exam and straight to the bar thence. Begone ye ghosts! I was in the library for 12 hours today. It's been 4 and a half years since an event like that has happened. Like Haley's comet, it'll probably be as long until next!