My Second Holiday

You're short a blog!
My entry a couple of days ago didn't make it up. I think that some setting on Firefox was killing the autosaves, and then wouldn't let the site redirect when I hit 'publish'. So all lost.

I went to the post office this morning and it was closed.
Why? I asked myself. I checked my phone, it was after 10 am and it is meant to open at 8:30. I checked the calendar in my phone to make sure it is Monday. (My phone doesn't tell me the day name, just the date.) So I checked the opening times again; the only thing that could make sense was the "closed public holidays".

Lo and behold! Today is an Islamic holiday!
(I have re-downloaded the Singapore public holidays document from the MOM.)

I have to get used to the idea of holidays for other religions.
This is cool, but so very different.
Yes, I was here for Deepavali, but it didn't impact on me in that I never noticed anything shut.

So, I was perusing this list of holidays (as you do) when it struck me that they really had the Christian ones wrong.
Well, to be exact, they have one Christian one wrong.
The most sacred day to Christians is Easter Sunday - not Good Friday.
I know this, I lived in a monastery for a while remember.
Yes, I know that most Christians think that Christmas is the most important day of their religion, but trust me - very few Christians know their own religion very well.

In order the major Christian holy days go; Easter Sunday, Good Friday, Christmas.

Think about it; the weekly holy day is Sunday isn't it?
And why? Because it is the weekly celebration of Jesus' rise from the dead.
For Moslems the weekly holy day is Friday, for Jews it is Saturday, and for Christians it is Sunday. It is not Friday.

This should highlight to you that it is the Sunday in Easter that is important, not the Friday.

However I notice for 2009 that there are three holidays listed on Sundays that are flagged as "the following Monday will be a public holiday" and given that most dedicated Xians would want to celebrate mass on both the Friday and the Monday, I would advise designating the Sunday as the official 'day' and the 'preceding Friday' as the public holiday. Make sense?

Technically, of course, Xians should have two public holidays for Easter and not have one for Christmas.

Truthfully, of course, Xians shouldn't have any public holidays.
'Easter' is the European harvest festival and 'Christmas' is the Pagan Winter Solstice. Xianity stole both. Well, 'rebadged' them and burnt to death anyone who disagreed.


I have been thinking for a while about posting something about girls and guys. Specifically how one thing that I hadn't seen was an Indian girl with a Chinese guy. Well, last night I did.

I had dinner at some little arty restaurant in Little India. The tempeh burger was okay, nice, but like a lasagne - too much of the same, I get bored. The smoothie wasn't that great. The desert was really good, and a lot of effort went into its presentation as well.

So, I have seen a dozen European guys with Asian girls, half a dozen European girls with Asian guys, half a dozen Indian guys with Chinese girls, and now one Indian girl with a Chinese guy. Most of the Asians with Euros have been Chinese, but that is a representative selection of Singaporeans.

I was getting worried, and to some degree still am, that the relationship between Indians and Chinese in Singapore is like that between Northern Europeans (Anglos mostly) and Southern Europeans (Italians, Greeks, etc.) in Australia.

Which brings me to another point.
I am not too used to seeing 'Caucasian' all the time on forms, but see it a lot here, on both government and corporate. Seems every form that I fill out asks my race. To be honest, really truthfully honest, I find the term 'Caucasian' insulting. I am not Caucasian. Yes, I am white skinned, with fair hair (born blond, darkening through my life {yes, 'blond', 'blond' is masculine, 'blonde' is feminine}) and blue eyes. This makes me European, or Aryan, it does not make me 'Caucasian'.

My heritage is from the North West of Europe, not from some hills as far South and East as you can get and still pretend to be in Europe. I claim descent from peoples that have been civilised for over a thousand years, not just hauled out of tents within living memory.

To give some comparison; do you think that Chinese people would like being told that when I was growing up they (and anyone with eyes like that) was referred to as 'Mongoloid'? Especially when also informed that 'mongoloid' was how we referred to our children with birth defects that lead to 'different' faces and reduced intellect (now a days referred to as Down Syndrome). No, I don't think so. And I feel the same way about being called 'Caucasian'.


Addendum; 'cos sometimes you think of something five minutes after you publish...

To further complicate this for most of you; what does 'Caucasian' mean anyhow? If some person is filling in some MOM form and ticks 'Caucasian' what is he or she saying? Are they just saying that they are of European descent? What about dark haired brown eyed people that happen to be, or descended from, European? What does an Australian business professional with brown eyes tick? 'Cos he sure as hell isn't 'Caucasian' by any defninition of the word.

To me brown eyes is brown eyes. Seriously I do not see any difference between a brown eyed 'European' and an Asian.

Maybe they put 'mixed' or 'other'?

After all, Aryans are blue eyed, any brown eyes come from mixed breeding with other races. By 'Aryan' I refer to the Celts, Tuetones, Greeks, Romans etc that European culture is derived from. The mixing mostly comes from Iberians, Lapps, and other pre-Aryan Eurpeans in the north and west, and Arabs, Turks etc in the south and east of Europe.

If anything 'Caucasian' must strictly mean blue eyes, blond hair, and white skin if nothing else. Mind you red hair is not from the Caucacus, it is from Scandinavia - which just highlights the difference that I am making.

(BTW, yes I have blond hair that has darkened as I have grown, but I have a red beard {when I don't shave} which also darkened as I grew.)