A New Week, A New Month

This week I start cold calling. Nothing from applying for jobs advertised, so I start calling on the agencies again and getting in their faces, and also approaching consultancies, to start with. My finances can handle another three months, as in this month, March, and then two more.

Remember my tale about the Chinese temple in Chinatown that broke my heart because it had been subsumed totally by Buddhism? Well, since then I took a walk around the nearby area between Changi Rd and East Coast Rd, Telok Kurau Rd and the Siglap Canal. There were three temples in the area that I visited, one had insignia - a Chinese character, and people's portraits, but no other iconography, the other two were both totally Buddhist. So absolutely no luck there.

I have tried out my Thoth deck, Aleister Crowley's deck, but found the pictures too 'busy' and hard to respond to. Also the booklet that came with them was next to useless. I did see a book at Kinokuniya on the Thoth deck, I might buy it, or I might not - I can't say that I am that impressed with the deck. I was told when I was a young student of the arts that it was a very powerful deck, that many were scared to use it because of what happened to Crowley, but that the cards had been designed before he went bad, but still to be wary of them as they were so powerful. This is not my experience now that I have tried them; confusing and convoluted, but so far not powerful.

I also tried out the manga deck my sister got me for xmas. They are a little odd in some ways, the artist has reversed the genders; i.e. everywhere there is a man in the Rider Waite deck he has used a woman and vice versa, so the Hanged Man becomes the Hanged Woman, the Kings become Queens and the Queens become Kings. Why? Because of this reversal I did not want to risk using a standard Rider Waite interpretation and relied upon the booklet that came with the deck for explanations, unfortunately it contained no interpretations for reversed cards, so I ensured that I shuffled the deck without reversing any. I did not use the standard Celtic cross layout that I almost always rely on, but the booklet had a nice little six card layout it said was good for relationships. So naturally I did one on Jazreel :)

Come on, what else would you expect of me?

Anyhow, same as always; [Relationship as Now] got the Two of Cups, [Relationship as Future] got the Ten of Cups, the usual sort of stuff, and yes, the Tower was in there as well. It was also in my Thoth deck reading, but I couldn't make sense out of most of that one.

Hard to believe, but it appears that my comments posted on Mr Wang Says So are still drawing attention. I got another comment posted here; not supportive this time, rather along the lines of "I read something bad about Singapore, therefore Singapore is bad, therefore everywhere else is better" sort of reasoning. There are poor people suffering in SG therefore it cannot be a better place than AU; I am sorry to have to burst a few illusions, but there are poor and homeless in Australia, and far more than I have seen here in SG. My statement stands; in my view SG is a better place for me to live in.

What I can't understand is the difficulty some people seem to have with the bits "in my view" and "for me"; it is as though because their view is different (and I stress the apparent lack of experiencing AU that these people exhibit) then it seems to follow logically for them that my view is flawed.

Wish I could remember the name of that guy that was on the Channel 10 "X-Files in Australia" type documentary back in the early days of the X Files. His partner (business and research) had been murdered, yet he was still demonstrating his technology on national television. One year later and he was murdered, shot through the head, it got four or five lines in one column on something like page fifteen of the Murdoch press, but I am guessing that they went onto thin ice to publish that much. These examples of government sanctioned murders would open up the discussion a bit. It is not easy to get names of people gaoled or certified because of their political activity because the mainstream media never carries such info, so you have to rely on underground sources and your circle of acquaintances; and, of course, in any discussion these will be challenged by people that will only believe something published in the state controlled media. How can you argue with such a mindset?

I will only believe that my God does not exist if you can show me my God saying that He does not exist.

It is, after all, a religious debate. Which is to say that it is defined by emotions and 'faith' and not by intelligence, logic, or facts. Just as 'religious' people need to believe in a better place, one that is found after death for the faithful, so these individuals need to believe in a better place; they just transfer this myth to the physical world by saying it is some other country where all social ills have been solved. They then contrast this with wherever they are residing to highlight everything that they do not like about their own country.

In a way I felt that Singapore was the ideal country. Now that I am living here some of the gloss has worn off; but I still think that, for me, it is a better place, for me, to be living. If some Singaporeans have difficulty with this and insist upon insisting that their country is some sort of Hell on Earth then that is their problem. One that will not be solved by emigrating to Australia or America, trust me. You will find some things better, some things worse, and some things just different. Also you will find many of the locals complaining about all of these Asians that the government is letting in, and why are they doing that? they don't add anything to the country or the economy, they just lower our standard of living blah, blah, blah. Oh, and don't forget the 'they are corrupting our women' sort of thing. You know, exactly the same stuff that a lot of 'angry Ah Phets' say about Ang Mohs.

Same stuff, everywhere in the world that you go; Germans complaining about non-Germans living in Germany, Scots complaining about non-Scots living in Scotland, Thais complaining about farangs in Thailand, Australians bemoaning the end of the White Australia policy. Same stuff, everywhere. Small surprise, therefore, that there are Singaporeans that say the same stuff, that have exactly the same feelings and make exactly the same comments that racists and xenophobes everywhere do. That they are so definitely a minority is shown simply by the constant election results in Singapore, but that they are so vocal a minority is a bit different; such comments would get you before the Federal Court in Australia. I know this; I have a friend that has a website that is operating under a Federal Court order, prohibiting him from saying some of the things he used to say and limiting the things that he says in the future. I seriously believe that some of the things said at me on the Mr Wang Says So site would have been grounds for lodging a complaint in Oz.

Perhaps I should investigate the Racial Harmony laws in SG?
Maybe they offer Whites some protection from vilification? Unlike Australia, where the Racial Vilification Act and other, state level, anti-racist laws do not provide any real protection for Whites, only for non-Whites. That being the definition of racial equality in Australia; just as the definition of gender equality is that the wife gets 70% of the assets in any divorce - mine did too, and I counted myself lucky that I got what I got. And that was with no children, otherwise I would have been lucky to get 10%.

And now the new Socialist government is considering allowing 'mistresses' to sue for 'divorce'; they are considering a law that would allow a woman that had been in a relationship with a man for two years or more, but not living with him, to be able to sue him for a share of his assets. End result? Australian men will be terrified of starting any sort of sexual relationship with a woman; they will go for casual sex only. When they want children and marriage they will leave the country to marry somewhere safer. So add 'matrimonial' refugees to the list of political refugees, economic refugees, social refugees.

Now a mass of SGers will complain about that statement; for your info I saw some programme on SBS once that stated in the voice-over at the end that over 300 Australians had been granted political refugee status by the US. But then again, I have friends that are 'economic refugees' from the US and are doing quite well in Australia. So that one goes both ways. But then again again I don't know but have read a fair bit about SGers emigrating to Oz to escape the work focus and to enjoy a more relaxed lifestyle in Australia. I don't know about that one; most business professionals that I know, myself included, regularly worked 50 hour weeks in AU, even though the law is that the standard week is 38 hours (40 hours per week, or 5 days of 8 hours, with a rostered day off every 4 weeks). By law any work over 38 hours is overtime and must be paid accordingly, the Federal Court does not recognise that 'salaried' employees are not entitled to overtime as many employers try to argue. But most people work those hours unpaid out of desperation to keep their jobs. So my personal experience of Australia is not quite the easy going place that so many SG blog flamers would have me believe. I would routinely work 8am to 6:30pm on some contracts. Eating at my desk whilst I crunched data.