Nice quote from Dr Wong Yin Onn today:

We have all built castles in the air, now let us put foundations under them.


Dr Randy Pausch also said something similar in his lecture
'How to Live Your Childhood Dreams':
Stop complaining, go and work hard to achieve your dreams.
Because the amount of resources you put into complaining
could have gone to fulfil your dreams.

(*Note what each of them are doing
and the near-coincidence of the time that they update their statuses)

The mystery has finally been unveiled! Two weeks back, whilst explaining how the final exams would look like, Prof Peleggi looks as if he were playing a game of Taboo: attempting to provide as much hints as possible without giving the obvious away. The furthest – and most obvious – cue that he provides is that our oral presentation would be involved!

(For oral presentation, we had to examine certain facets of Singapore life that cuts across both personal and official memories. Topics that have were chosen included SARS, upgrading, the Malaysian Cup, the Speak Good English Movement – my group chose the topic on Phua Chu Kang.)

The more Peleggi said it, the more mystifying (and anticipatory) it becomes, reminiscent of directions for a treasure hunt: reassurances that the treasure will be at this specific spot if you will find.

Right, so here are the exam questions. 2 hours to answer 3 questions, one of them being compulsory.

===========================

HY3226: Memory, History and Heritage

SECTION I (40%)

1. (Compulsory) The National Museum intends to mount a temporary exhibition on your group project for this module. Accordingly, you must submit a memo containing:

(1) The list of the objects to be exhibited
(2) The basic guidelines on the exhibition’s design
(3) The outline of the script for the exhibition’s panels

Your memo is the answer to this question.


SECTION II (30%) – answer any ONE question:

2. In what ways have colonialism first, nationalism later and globalisation during the past two decades shaped the historical knowledge and cultural heritage of Southeast Asia?

3. Discuss the following statement: ‘National commemorations play a central role in nation-building by ritually embedding history in social memory.’


SECTION III (30%) – answer any ONE question:

4. To what extent do the personal memories of female war victims, such as the Dutch Jan Ruff-Herne and the Vietnamese Kim Phuc, accord with the dominant historical narratives of the Pacific War and the Vietnam War respectively?

5. While the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek mass grave site in Phnom Penh memorialise the tragic history of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-78), the ex-Khmer Rouge who were granted amnesty have never apologised for their crimes. Do you think such a compromise between the moral imperative of remembering and the political expediency of forgetting is necessary if Cambodians are to move on as a nation? Or is the attainment of historical truth and justice the necessary condition for national reconciliation in Cambodia? Motivate your answer.


===========================


I answer questions 1, 3 and 4. When I first look at Question (1), I have to admit I was stumped for the moment. On one hand, how am I supposed to write a memo? On the other… it looks deceptively straightforward. I always have a gut feeling towards straightforward questions… always suspecting that the professors might have cunningly inserted some hidden agenda – in other words, a trick question designed to ‘Gotcha!’

Doing 3 questions in 2 hours is pretty painful: that means 40 minutes allocated per question. I do Question (3) last, and I think I lost it there – halfway I fear I was probably writing something that was irrelevant to the question – here I am talking about national commemorations and how it contributes to social, collective memory and I forget to specifically direct how everything contributes to nation-building. I have to cancel one entire paragraph because of this; hence some measure of time is wasted.

Question (5) is out of the question (pun unintended): I did not revise about the Cambodian Genocide (also I missed that lecture and everything about it) so I am unable to write about it. That leaves no choice but to do Question (4). Thank goodness I did not miss those lectures, because the two ladies mentioned there are from the documentaries that we watched in class.

Here’s some background information about who these two women are. Jan Ruff-Herne and several other Dutch women were seized from a POW prison in Batavia (the former name for Jakarta) and sent to work as ‘comfort women’ to serve Japanese officers during World War II. ‘Comfort’ is really the inappropriate word for use even historically, because these women were blatantly sex slaves. They were not alone: t thousands of other women from countries invaded by Japan, in East and Southeast Asia, were also forced into similar situations. After the war, few had the courage to talk about their predicament, not even to their loved ones. Pressure from society, embarrassed by these acts, also discouraged them. At last Jan Ruff-Herne decided to step out and tell the world her story. She attended several of conferences where former sex slaves came up to tell their stories, some of these in Japan, the homeland of her former captors. At the same time she organised a support group for the other Dutch women who had been with her at that brothel for officers in Batavia.

Kim Phuc is the girl in the photograph from the Vietnamese War: the one where she is seen running down the road, screaming, completely naked because her clothes had all been burned off following a napalm attack on her village by South Vietnamese. The photograph was a measure of coincidence: the journalists were there to take pictures of the aerial bombing. Instead they saw a bunch of people running through the smoke after the bombs had struck the ground – they had been hit by the napalm that was contained in those bombs. The photograph itself does not show it, but in the documentary we watched, the journalists present at the site poured water over her body to cool her down, then whisked her off to hospital for immediate surgery. They were able to save her, and then she became some kind of national monument for the Communist government as a bastion against the evil Americans and their South Vietnamese ‘cronies’ who terrorised the Vietnamese during the war. It sickened her to be discouraged from attending school in return for publicity campaigns – eventually she decided to seek asylum with her husband in Canada following their honeymoon to Cuba. She is now a Canadian citizen. Kim Phuc bears an excellent story of forgiveness: she met and forgave the man who had contributed to her becoming a victim of a napalm attack. John Plummer – a veteran of the Vietnam War who is now a Reverend – had called for the air strikes on instructions from higher authorities without verifying that there were still civilians in the village. The purpose for aerial bombing had been to flush out Viet Cong (Communist) hideaways. None of the troops knew that Kim’s family and fellow villagers were still hiding in the temple located close to the strike zone.

So I argue that accounts of female victimisation in war have often been undermined in the official historical narratives of these wars. Victimisation is seldom mentioned – at best in passing – there is a greater tendency to trumpet the heroism and sacrifices of the victors while demonising the enemy. (I did not write this in my script and sorely regret not thinking of it at the moment. Anyway it’s over.) That is not to say that women are completely out of the picture, but the heroism and sacrifices made by women tend to be emphasised instead. This means that women who had contributed to the war effort were recognised. During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese women took part in combat – they tended to the fields and their daily chores with rifles slung over their shoulders. Women were also honoured as mothers – the very people who bore and raised the young men who sacrificed themselves for their country. Hence commendation for these ‘Heroic Mothers’ were created in 1994 (strangely little late though – the war ended in 1975). A Women’s Museum was also built in Ho Chi Minh City, commemorating the efforts of women in warfare. However, as said, cases of victimisation are usually mentioned in passing – ‘rape occurred in so-and-so place’ and that’s about it. Well I could be wrong, but that’s how most historical narratives seem to portray themselves.

I am flabbergasted how there can actually exist a Facebook group that is targeted towards an individual with negative intentions.

I am browsing through Group updates when I notice that one of my contacts has joined this particular group entitled ‘The Federation of Solid Protection for the Innocent against (name of the person – which I have removed to protect h__ privacy)’. Curious I click on it. And then I realise this is not some fan club but a coalition (of local unviersity students) attacking some individual (I do not know this person).

Quite unlikely it looks like it’s been done for a measure of fun, because the description for the group is particularly obnoxious:

‘To people who thinks that (the target) needs to so much less f***ing irritating..less act cute...less act chio..we need to combine forces to STOP h__ and stop h__ from bringing h__ dildo umbrella around for the good of all man kind. WE need to protect one another from this ________________!!!’

Good grief.

Found this really cool website called

Photoshop Disasters (http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/).

Almost all these pictures are commercial works for the mass media...!


Here are some pictures and captions from the site. LOL


Layering mistake? Head injury? Malice? The Daily Mail's rugby coverage takes a psychotropic turn.

Why You Make the Same Mistake Twice
By Jeanna Bryner

Wed, 23 April 2008
Yahoo! News

Original source from LiveScience: Health
http://www.livescience.com/health/080423-mistake-mistake.html

We sure do learn from our mistakes, but what we learn is how to make more mistakes, new research shows.

This seemingly counterintuitive idea comes from a study of a phenomenon called tip of the tongue (TOT), detailed in the most recent issue of the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

A tip-of-the-tongue state occurs when your brain has accessed the correct word, but for some reason can’t retrieve the sound information for it. While the word-glitch can happen regardless of your vocabulary aptitude, researchers have found TOT happens more for bilinguals (they have more words to sift through), older people and individuals with brain damage.

‘This can be incredibly frustrating - you know you know the word, but you just can’t quite get it,’ said researcher Karin Humphreys of McMaster University in Ontario. ‘And once you have it, it is such a relief that you can’t imagine ever forgetting it again. But then you do.’

The reason, she suggests, is that the time spent not remembering causes our brains to reinforce that ‘mistake pathway.’

‘We know this is how the brain works - it reinforces whatever it does. So [the study results] completely make sense,’ Humphreys told LiveScience. ‘But at the same time, it’s so counterintuitive to how we feel we should learn from all our mistakes.’


It’s on the tip of my tongue…

With funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Humphreys and McMaster University colleague Amy Beth Warriner tested word-retrieval in 30 undergraduate students.

The students were offered a series of definitions and had to indicate whether they knew the answer, didn’t know it, or if the answer was at the tip of his or her tongue. If a student answered TOT, he or she spent either 10 seconds or 30 seconds trying to come up with the word before getting the answer. Two days later, students completed the same word-retrieval test with the same definitions.

Students tended to report TOT for the same words that twisted their tongues in the first test. Those who were given 30-second stints to retrieve the words in past tests were even more likely to get stuck again.


Mistake begets mistake

The period in which people continue to rack their brains for the answer could be referred to as ‘error learning,’ Humphreys said. ‘You’ll keep on digging yourself the wrong pathway, you either have 10 seconds worth of that extra bad learning or you have 30 seconds worth of that extra bad learning.’

In a follow-up study, the researchers found the best way to tackle mistake-learning is to repeat the word (out loud or in your head) once you find the correct answer. And instead of trying to recall the elusive word, stop and ask a colleague or look it up on the Web.

The findings should apply to other situations, including music and sports. ‘Music teachers know this principle’ they tell you to practice slowly,’ Humphreys said. ‘If you practice fast, you’ll just practice your mistakes.’

We always hope that people will be civic-minded and not play music from their mobiles loudly on the buses and trains, because not everybody appreciates it. Some people prefer peace and quiet on their journeys.

Likewise, we always hope that SBS Transit will be civic-minded and not play audio from their Mobile loudly on the bus, because not everybody appreciates it. Some people prefer peace and quiet on their journeys.

In a supposedly self-appraised 'democratic' country, this is called AUDIOCRACY.

BA Sat Corpse in First Class

By Steven Swinford
The Times Online, 18 March 2007

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1530572.ece


A BRITISH Airways passenger travelling first class has described how he woke up on a long-haul flight to find that cabin crew had placed a corpse in his row.

The body of a woman in her seventies, who died after the plane left Delhi for Heathrow, was carried by cabin staff from economy to first class, where there was more space. Her body was propped up in a seat, using pillows.

The woman’s daughter accompanied the corpse, and spent the rest of the journey wailing in grief.

Paul Trinder, who awoke to see the body at the end of his row, last week described the journey as “deeply disturbing”, and complained that the airline dismissed his concerns by telling him to “get over it”.

“It was a complete mess – they seemed to have no proper plans in place to deal with the situation,” said Trinder, 54, a businessman from Brackley, Northamptonshire.

The woman died during a nine-hour flight on a Boeing 747. Trinder was catching up on sleep when he was woken by a commotion and opened his eyes to see staff manoeuvring the body into a seat.

“I didn’t have a clue what was going on. The stewards just plonked the body down without saying a thing. I remember looking at this frail, sparrow-like woman and thinking she was very ill,” said Trinder.

“She kept slipping under the seatbelt and moving about with the motion of the plane. When I asked what was going on I was shocked to hear she was dead.”

The woman’s daughter and son-in-law arrived soon after and began grieving. Trinder said: “It was terrifying. I put my earplugs in but couldn’t get away from the fact that there was a woman wailing at the top of her voice just yards away. It was a really intense, primal sound.

“I felt helpless. Grief is a very personal thing; it’s not as if there was anything I could do or say.”

Trinder, chief executive of Capital Safety, which makes products for the building industry, holds a BA gold card and travels more than 200,000 miles a year with the airline.

He became particularly concerned about the state of the body. “When you have a decaying body on a plane at room temperature for more than five hours there are significant health and safety risks,” he said.

After the plane landed, those in first class remained on board for an hour before police and a coroner gave the all-clear.

“The police even started interviewing me as a potential witness, although I had no idea what had happened to the woman. I just kept thinking to myself: ‘I’ve paid more than £3,000 for this’,” Trinder said.

When contacted by BA about the complaint, Trinder says he was told he would not be compensated and should “get over” the incident.

BA said the dead woman was taken into first class because the rest of the plane was full.
A spokesman said: “When a customer passes away on board it is always difficult and we apologise for any distress caused.”

He said there were about 10 deaths each year out of 36m passengers.

Other carriers use different procedures. Singapore Airlines has introduced “corpse cupboards” on its Airbus 340-500 aircraft. Cabin crews use the locker if there is no empty row of seats to place a corpse.

One of my friends wrote and posted a Facebook note:


Quick Guide to Mat-Minah Grammar
By Erwin Shah

So I’m not a fan of writing in notes but this one has got to be a must-post note. The title speaks for itself. So here’s the deal to mat-minah grammar. By the way if you didn’t know, you’ll have to pronounce Mat similar to ‘Mud’ and not like a floor mat.

Gua [goo-wah] noun – What some mats and minahs use to call themselves. Similar in using ‘lu’ when referring to others. A legacy that dates back to the times of Mat Rocks back in the early 80s.

A common trick that can be played on Mats is to ask them to translate the English phrase ‘Monkey Cave’ into Malay. The mat will then say ‘Gua Monyet’ (I’m a monkey). Yes, they just love doing it over and over again.

Mat [mat] noun – To the rest of the world, the word simply means a Malay guy. But within the Malay community itself there is a growing disparity in consensus to its actual meaning. Popularly, it’s used to denote a guy who converses primarily in Malay, as opposed to the more ‘English speaking’ types. Favourites of the mats include tapered jeans, trucker caps and weepy Malay songs with sickeningly suicidal lyrics.

Matrep [mat-rape] noun – An extreme version of the mat. In addition to the usual mat accessories, a matrep will also come adorned with tattoos and matching body-piercings in weird corners of his body.

Minah [mee-nah] noun – An expression used to denote a Malay female. Derived from the popular Malay name, Aminah, which used to be all the rage some time ago. It was sort of the ‘in-thing’ to name your daughter Aminah back in the 60s and 70s. In fact, legend has it that if you go to Geylang Serai market and shout ‘Hai Minah!’ at least a quarter of the makcik population there is going to turn around and smile at you.

Picit [pee-chet] adjective – When a mat tells you to ‘picit’ him, it does not mean that he is trying to be cheeky (or gay, if he is talking to a fellow mat). It simply means that the mat wants you to call him on his mobile. I swear to you I had no idea what it meant the first time I heard it.
Relaksuah [ree-lek-soo-wah] adjective – Official slogan and life motto of the mats and minahs. It’s as good as Take a Chill Pill.

Sial [see- yal ] noun / adjective – A full stop in every mat’s sentence. Eg: ‘Tadi aku nampak accident sial Rabak sial Aku tak bedek sial Kesian sial’ Translation: Just now I saw an accident (full stop) It was bad (full stop) I’m not kidding (full stop) Poor guy (full stop)

In its purest form, ‘sial’ means ‘jinx’ but mats have refined the art of using the word to include it at the end of their every sentence. Also comes in the more polite form ‘siak’ and ‘siul’ for those who do not want to sound too crude.

Skank [s-kank] adjective - A favourite weird-looking dance performed by mats and minahs. Usually done at any of the various gigs that mats and minahs love to congregate at. At times, you do detect evidence of artistry in the dance but most of the time they just look like they’ve been possessed by the ghost of a restless retard.

Sowie [soh-wee] adjective – An expression of apology used by minahs. Commonly used in SMS and instant messaging. Actually they can just use the word ‘sorry’ like every normal human being but minahs think that it will make them sound extra cute to deliberately talk that way. Example : ‘I will be late. Sowie!’

Step [se-tep] adjective – To beguile, dissimulate or impersonate something or someone that they are not. Also commonly used to describe a fellow mat or minah who acts in an arrogant manner. E.g.’Kau jangan nak step tak tahu eh?’ Translation: Don’t you dare feign innocence in this matter. Can also be used as a gerund e.g. ‘stepping’. See next entry.

Step Jambu [se-tep jam-boo] adjective - What minahs do when they are sitting alone in a train and a group of mats walk in. It is a general exercise where the minah ‘controls’ her facial muscles and posture in a way that would make her look her best. This would usually involve looking incessantly at her handphone for no particular reason.

Stoppit [setop-eet] adjective – A general expression of intolerance and dismay. When a minah uses this phrase, be very careful for it signals that she is about to lose her cool or get very violent.

Usually directed by minahs in an annoyed manner, followed by the postfix ‘seh’, ‘siak’ or ‘sial’. (See entry for ‘sial’ above) Eg: Apasal ngan perangai kau hari ni? Stopitsiak! Transalation : What’s up with your attitude today? Enough of it already for goodness’ sake!’

You’ve just learnt something new today, ladies and gentlemen.

Money Buys Happiness – If You Spend on Someone Else

Friday, 21 March 2008
The Star Online
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/3/21/worldupdates/2008-03-21T030401Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_India-326100-1&sec=worldupdates



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Money can buy happiness, but only if you spend it on someone else, researchers reported on Thursday.

Spending as little as $5 a day on someone else could significantly boost happiness, the team at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School found.

Their experiments on more than 630 Americans showed they were measurably happier when they spent money on others -- even if they thought spending the money on themselves would make them happier.

“We wanted to test our theory that how people spend their money is at least as important as how much money they earn,” said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia.

They asked their 600 volunteers first to rate their general happiness, report their annual income and detail their monthly spending including bills, gifts for themselves, gifts for others and donations to charity.

“Regardless of how much income each person made, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not,” Dunn said in a statement.

Dunn’s team also surveyed 16 employees at a company in Boston before and after they received an annual profit-sharing bonus of between $3,000 and $8,000.

“Employees who devoted more of their bonus to pro-social spending experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that bonus was a more important predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself,” they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

“Finally, participants who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money on themselves,” they said.

They gave their volunteers $5 or $20 and half got clear instructions on how to spend it. Those who spent the money on someone or something else reported feeling happier about it.

“These findings suggest that very minor alterations in spending allocations -- as little as $5 -- may be enough to produce real gains in happiness on a given day,” Dunn said.

This could also explain why people are no happier even though U.S. society is richer.

“Indeed, although real incomes have surged dramatically in recent decades, happiness levels have remained largely flat within developed countries across time,” they wrote.

Copyright © 2008 Reuters

Managing Life Changes
By Dr Wong Yin Onn


It’s funny that in such a constantly-changing world that not more of us have naturally developed the aptitude to deal with it more effectively. Or has our love for consistency evolved as a defence against the reality of an ever-shifting world? Has our fear of change compelled us to construct schedules, routines, limits and borders? Is this an attempt to delay change?

Whatever the reason, it certainly seems odd that human beings are not more biologically-wired to deal with change. Sure, some of us seem to thrive on constant change, but most of us are undoubtedly more comfortable with consistency. For some of us, the fear of change can be downright crippling, so how can we learn to manage change more effectively?

Well, first it’s important to understand what our stress over change comes from. This stress essentially is our body telling our mind that there’s something we need to deal with that we have not experienced before, that we may need to adapt to, and that we may not be adequately prepared for. So what does this tell us?

Firstly, that we need to keep ourselves prepared for change. This means keeping our mind and body in optimum condition to deal with any adjustments. Which means eating right, keeping fit, and getting enough sleep. That takes care of our body; as for our mind, we need to maintain its resource level at a healthy high. This entails maintaining a store of knowledge, and regularly challenging our mind to think quickly and creatively. We can do this by reading widely, and by interacting with people whom we find intellectually-challenging.

We also need to develop some relaxation techniques that we can regularly balance our spirit with, and even use when confronting the change itself. You’ll have to find what works for you, but for most people, this simple trick seems to work - most of the time, when we’re stressed, our breathing inadvertently becomes faster and that actually stresses us even more.

So when in a stressful situation, try focusing on and slowing down your breathing. Imagine the progress of each breath as drawing one side of a square and make each line last four seconds. Inhale, 2, 3, 4, and exhale, 2, 3, 4... and repeat. You’ll find yourself becoming calmer. Other people swear by meditation, yoga, journaling, walking or listening to soothing music.
And when potentially faced with a stressful change, try to get a clearer picture of it. The more you understand something, the less frightening it usually becomes. This is how, over time, we become familiar with initially-strange surroundings as well.

And finally, ask yourself ‘What’s the worst that can happen, really?’ You’ll find that most of the time, the consequences aren’t that bad. They’re not something you can’t live down. Besides, with change comes other possibilities that will actually be pleasant or beneficial for you. Try focusing on those.

I make a mistake in the spelling of the writer's name in the citations... incidentally he is also the marker for my paper.

Singapore Lyric Opera is staging Turandot (see http://themadscene.athenarts.com./)! Oh gosh I can’t wait to watch it! Wait…I need money… still waiting for outstanding paychecks from clients…

SMS Messages that might have Changed the World

From TALKINGCOCK.COM
http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid=2530&mode=thread&order=0


SMS has really revolutionized our communications. But imagine how it would have changed things if it had been around earlier…


SMS MESSAGES THAT MIGHT HAVE CHANGED THE WORLD

1. Dun let big wood horse in. Inside=greeks.

2. Tell ang mohs dun point guns @ sea. Japs on bikes @ Causeway liao.

3. Romeo, Juli8 not dead! Dun gabra – Friar L.

4. Raffles, not sure abt dat island u proposed. Bit small.. – Lord Hastings

5. Saddam, stop bluffing abt WMD, wait dat cowboy really come n bomb us, den we all how?

6. Sang Nila, chk Wikipedia oredi. Animal u saw not lion: tiger. Island shd b name Harimaupura instd.

7. Dunno why, but I dun trust dat small Austrian fler mit der Chaplin mustache. He a bit gila lai dat.

8. George, really h8 dat Jar Jar fler in Ep 1. Can dun put him in?

9. Chief, palefaces coming with 3 ships to colonize u. Dun fren them. Dey tink ur Indian.

10. Jack, dun go on dat Titanic ship. 2moro got anor ship wif casino. Better.

11. Urgent! Dun let MSK go toilet alone, k? Skali he cabut den we all kena.

12. Ed says ‘8Days’ cannot. Wait ppl tink we donno how many days in 1 week. Change back to ‘7Days’.

13. PM, remember: laksa, not mee siam, k? Gd luck! – Spch Wrtr

Got any potentially world-changing SMS messages of your own? Let us know leh!


Added by other readers:

14. Tell the Hairy guy I said no to independence....The Queen (contributed by Alan Shore)

15. Eve I be back soon... dun listen to anyone without limbs... (contributed by Alan Shore)

New parody:

(PRICES GOING) UP
Based on ‘Up’ by Shania Twain


The latest news are bugging me
Seems like all prices have increased
Where I used to drive along
The heartlands, it was free
Now I have to pay a fee

Don’t say I’m trying to be lame
I can’t help it but exclaim
There’s a rise up
In the price of rice
That’s right, that’s reality

[Chorus]
Up, up, up
Prices go up, we hear
Up, up, up
There’s no decrease, we fear
Up, up, up
Everything costs us so dear

It’s ‘bout as bad as it can be
Desperate for things on sale or free
It gets expensive every day
But they won’t raise my pay
There’s so much disparity

To [Chorus]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah...

And every time you hear the beep
You feel your cash cards start to bleed
On the car, the train, the bus
Watch your deduction, aghast
At the balance in your card

Economy’s said to be strong
But our ang paos don’t last for long
The truthful price has come around
No way to keep it down
You gotta keep holding on…

Some peoples’ pays just don’t make sense
But die, die they want to defend
The reason why they’re doing this
‘Cos politics’ a gift
Of the talented elite

To [Chorus]

Oh-- I’m going up [4x]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah...

A very interesting article that I chance upon while researching for my oral presentation on the topic Phua Chu Kang: between official and personal memories


Cultural Homicide, ayoh!
By Ziauddin Sardar

New Internationalist 333
Global Media / CULTURE
April 2001
http://www.singapore-window.org/sw01/010401ni.htm


Ziauddin Sardar arrives in Singapore to find it’s been occupied

It has been my misfortune to arrive in various places around the world only to be engulfed in local crisis. I am no stranger to war, rumours of war, coups d'etat and various natural disasters. But never before had I stepped off a plane to be confronted with cultural homicide.
Changi Airport is globalization run riot, an impersonal consumerist cornucopia of designer labels. It is also dedicated to being the world's premier transport hub. From here you can go anywhere, ushered along by the ubiquitous Singapore Girl. Whenever I arrive in the building, I leave as rapidly as possible, hoping for a talkative ride into Singapore city centre, courtesy of a local taxi driver.

And that is how the full scale of the culture crisis overwhelmed me. I was spared the usual inquisition that introduces conversation- where are you from, how's the economy there, how long are you staying, what do you think of Singapore. Enough to say I was down from Kuala Lumpur for the weekend to invoke a deluge of angst. 'Ah, no need sorry for my Singlish lah. You boleh Singlish, ah? Very bad, ah. Prime Minister say Singlish cannot, ah. So now what, ayoh?' A few rapid-fire inquiries on my part and the full enormity hit me, as surely as if I'd been in Delhi the fateful day the British took over. Phua Chu Kang was to take English lessons! The End.

Let me elaborate. Phua Chu Kang is the highest-rated show on Singapore television. It is a locally produced sitcom about a lovable, rascally private building contractor, the said Phua Chu Kang. In the rich mix that is Singapore, Phua Chu Kang is played by local superstar Gurmit Singh, a born-again Christian Sikh who is married to a Chinese. His greatest comedy creation is a know-all operator who knows nothing and botches everything. The comedy emerges from the delicious observation of everyday, indigenous life expressed in the full tropical profusion of the native dialect. Phua Chu Kang, like most Singaporeans, speaks only Singlish. Singlish is the exotic lingua franca nurtured from English by way of Chinese, Malay and various Indian Subcontinental accretions. It is as rich, encrusted and lush a dialect as the road bridges across the highway from Changi Airport. These concrete structures are completely enveloped by green vines intermingled with brightly flowering bougainvillea. They look like natural phenomenon, outgrowths of the earth.

Singlish is authentic local repossession. It is an indigenous cultural form that has dug its roots deep into the fabric of imperialism, the force that created the artificial nation-state of Singapore and its ethnic mix. But, Singapore now has globalized visions of future riches. The most successful of the Asian tiger economies, it is the Switzerland of the region. It is an attainment-oriented, high-achieving paternalist autocracy. Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong always strikes me as man at home with Singlish. But that is not the kind of place his Singapore is destined to be. To globalize one must Americanize and Singapore is Americanizing with a vengeance.

Prior to my arrival, Goh made a speech denouncing Phua Chu Kang for polluting the airways with his native patois. Singlish was diverting the youth of the nation from their mission to succeed. It was no random outburst. Nothing in Singapore is random. In precise terms this attack on Phua Chu Kang defines the meaning of globalization. Globalization is cultural homicide writ large, and television is the mirror wherein the future is displayed.

In the service of global yuppiedom

Success means inculcating globalized manners, mores and values, as seen on TV. Consequently, internalizing global identity means eradicating what comes naturally. Singapore culture must be ersatz, like all the renovated shop houses around the downtown marina. These elegant buildings, in colonial fusion style, have been lovingly renovated to service global yuppiedom. They house French, Spanish, Mexican, Mediterranean, any nationality except Asian, franchise restaurants. Here tourists and upwardly mobile local entrepreneurs indulge in fine wining and dining to the strains of the latest pop classics. Local architecture is just a quaint backdrop.

When you globalize everything what you get is Singapore. When you want to know what Singapore is about you watch SBC, the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, local purveyor of television. Once upon a time SBC was modelled on the BBC, which even seconded staff to train Singaporeans in public-service broadcasting. But that is not the kind of animal globalization is. SBC has become a multi-channelled hydra; its main outlet provides 24-hour entertainment-driven programming, mainly consisting of imported American series. It also runs its own CNN clone news channel. In Singapore it is easier to find out who is dating whom in Hollywood than anywhere in the world, except perhaps Hollywood.

Being Singapore, the change of direction is deliberate, planned and purposeful. The objective: to be a regional broadcasting hub, a production centre selling regionally, thinking and looking globally; synergistically intermeshing the entire communications revolution experience, IT savvy, hot wired into mass global popular culture. And that is why Phua Chu Kang must learn to talk proper English, or at least a mid-Pacific variant.

The moral of this tale is rather simple. If the richest, most highly educated, nationalist country in the developing world will willingly sacrifice its cultural identity, the last, best bastion of its individuality, to globalization - we can be sure the pandemic has already happened.

Globalization is now sold as the best chance for economic uplift of the excluded masses of the world's poor. It marches forward by stripping them of all that civilizes them in their own tradition, history and cultural expression. Imperialism produced mongrelization. Given independence and time, mongrelization could and does generate indigenous creativity and revitalization, the Phua Chu Kang effect. But to be successful globalized economic empowerment requires something quite different. It needs naked entry into mass popular culture manufactured in America, recycled and parodied by pale imitation everywhere. Indeed, The End - of civilization as the peoples of the world have known it, lived it and cherished its richness and diversity.

Like a scavenger seeking nourishment, I ingested Singaporean television in the hope of finding a glimmer of a cure, only to get larger doses of disease. I found the locally made documentaries on 'disappearing Asia', designed in imitation for sale to such outlets as Discovery Channel. They had recruited Lea Silonga, Filipina star of the hit musical Saigon, to front disparaging, patronizing looks at quaint exotica. The programmes out-did classic Victorian lady travellers. Indeed, the commentary sounded as if it could have been written by a Victorian lady traveller, titillated but less than amused at what old Asia once was, and should not be allowed to remain. The victims have become the perpetrators. That is what globalization means.


Britney, Brad and Mel, Ronan and Michael

Globalization is about information. The lifeblood of the future economy is instant access, instant comprehension of global information. What this flood of information says is money makes the world go around. To get money requires hooking on to trade, identifying markets. Simply put, it means replicating as swiftly as possible the places where money is centred, derived from, value added to: those G7 giants.

The port of entry into the new global dispensation is the media. Television is IT, the acme of information technology. Television shows the market what is marketable. It disseminates the style, generates and popularizes by constant repetition the merchandising opportunities. It makes global popular culture the only reality. Every home has a TV, every home becomes a portal on the superhighway to a globalized, homogenized world full of Singapores. Literally, one teleports direct to the new dispensation. The youth of the world are the sacrificial lambs offered up in this slaughter of cultural identity.

The civilizations of China, India and Islam support young populations with average ages between 20 and 25, and their increasing spending power is the lodestar of globalized marketing techniques and multinational merchandising concerns. An advertisement for the Hong Kong Bank says it all: 'There are 3 billion people in Asia. Half of them are under 25. Consider it a growing market.'

This 'growing market' is being targeted in a specific way. Through television, advertising, movies and pop music they are force-fed a total lifestyle package. What matters is the look, the affectation, the cool; and each of these abstractions can be translated into a merchandising equivalent available at a nearby shopping mall. What in the West operates as a culture of narcissism finds embodiment in Asia as hero worship. The heroes are the pop stars, the movie stars, the TV stars, the sports stars, who rule the global stage mirrored on your TV screen. The audience is positively brainwashed to talk, act, think and live as their heroes do.

Star power is not Asian. It is Madonna, Britney, Brad and Mel, Ronan and Michael, Manchester United and Agassi. The stars and the world view marketed with and by them are hyped and hyper-ventilated. They are the tools of the global economics of TV.

The Hollywood television factories make their money in the American market. The content of their programmes is driven by the internal dictates of Americana and its predilections. From its beginning American television has been a marketing device pure and simple. It is organized and operated to serve the tastes and interests of commercial sponsors and advertisers.

What Hollywood makes in the global marketplace is profit. It sells costly, high-production value, glossy programmes for discounted prices to the television networks of the world. If it costs Singapore, or Malaysia $100,000 to buy an episode of X Files, they are getting a product that cost $5 million to make. The cost of bought-in programming is internationally regulated - the poorer the country the less they pay. So it is impossible for Third World countries to produce local programmes with such production values. Locally produced programmes look poor in comparison to imports and seldom attract advertising.


'Best in Singapore'

While the global economics of TV are compelling, they are not the full story. What is seen on TV takes on an educational meaning; it is the substance of which global success is made. So the children of the élite in newly emerging economies in Asia buy into and act out the lifestyle of the rich and dominant in the West. The studied disaffection of urban youth culture in the West produces the epidemic of lepak in Malaysia. Lepak are young people who spend their days hanging out in shopping malls, affecting the style and perhaps being bored out of their skulls.

But acquiring the look, the clothes, even the video and cassettes that comprise global popular culture is not a straightforward transmission of purchasing power into the pocket of multinationals. Asia is counterfeit country, home of the genuine imitation 100-per-cent fake. The street markets in every city and town are awash with clothes, bags, sun glasses, watches, electrical and electronic goods, music tapes, videos and computer software cloned, pirated and all locally reproduced. For a pittance, young Asians can emulate their heroes while simultaneously stimulating local enterprise. The WTO hates it, Asian governments must promise to exterminate it - but the black economy is proof positive that resistance is not futile.

Globalization is a disease. But it just may be the kind of virus that requires the patient to get worse before they can recover. However much television pushes the youth of Asia to venerate global icons, super megastars, one fact remains. The biggest audience is always for local shows. Cheap and cheerful Singaporean, or Malaysian, or Indonesian, or Thai programmes may be. Friends, ER or Star Trek they are not. But Hollywood stars don't speak Singlish, or Malay or Urdu. No matter how young people try, such icons do not and cannot look or know or experience what makes young Asians tick. Eventually, we all want to look in a mirror and see ourselves.

Maybe Phua Chu Kang is right after all. His catchphrase, 'best in Singapore', is proved by the ratings war - he is the king of comedy. So beyond the global noise of the information super highway, perhaps we should be listening for the siren song of local heroes calling us to a new departure. Perhaps local routes in developing countries can lead us back to the place we belong: a self-made world, rich and various. Prime Minister Goh, please take note.

Ziauddin Sardar is editor of Third Text, the critical journal of visual art and culture. His most recent book is The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur (Reaktion Books, London, 2000).

There has been feedback that national songs of late are unmemorable, and some even avoid the mention of ‘Singapore’ in the lyrics. Do you think that destroys the characteristic of these songs in serving the purpose of galvanising the nation?

Personally, I only recognise them as national songs because of the music videos that accompany them. Voices aren’t a very convincing benchmark, because they generally sound Asian, so Singapore might not even pop into your brain at the first impression.

The latest National Day song, Jimmy Ye’s ‘There’s No Place I’d Be’ – aside from the very obvious similarity to Dick Lee’s ‘Home’ – could well be sung by a Russian (just a random choice, no hard feelings) in his/her mother tongue, and then people might go, ‘That’s a Russian song.’ For the song takes us on a round-the-world tour per line, but doesn’t explicitly mention where the ‘home’ is

Consider the lyrics:

I’ve walked the streets of Cairo and Bombay
I’ve seen the neon signs on ole Broadway
I’ve climbed the Eiffel Tower,
The Great Wall in one hour,
Experienced sweet and sour but that’s okay.

Seen Hollywood, the sunsets in LA.
The London Bridge, Big Ben, the Thames, UK
I’ve crossed the River Kwai
Yet still I don’t know why
I think of you each night and every day.

There’s no place I’d rather be
You’ll always be a part of me
And even though I’ve roamed the world
It’s still my home I long to see.

This is where my family
And my friends grew up with me
So I’ll cross the skies and sail the seas
To be where I wanna be.

Cos there’s no place I’d rather be!


So any nationality whose landmark or geographical locale does not appear in the song is entitled to sing it and claim it as his/her. It’s a song of EVERYWHERE and hence NOWHERE (borrowed from Geography).

Someone posts this on a class forum, regarding Singapore music. He considers ‘xinyao’ (Singapore folk-pop) to be ‘unique to Singapore, as they are composed and sung by Singaporeans, and are also said to reflect the lives of Singaporeans (年少时候，小人物的心声，我们这一班，etc.)

So I cannot resist writing a response. The topic on Singapore music has been something I have always pondered on and off, as a problem raised many times over the years by music people in Singapore. The following text contains my humble thoughts about identity in Singapore music.

From a thematic perspective I agree, yes, xinyao can be considered being ‘unique to Singapore’, because the topics reflect very much on the development of Singaporeans – growing up (细水长流 a.k.a. 年少时候, 新加坡派, 小人物的心声). The topics of these songs evoke personal memories of the ordinary Singaporean. This is partly aided by the simplicity and singability of the songs.

What else would we consider as Singapore music? Problem is, we do not have a culture that has transcended through the ages, sufficient for a characteristic style to develop, in the way such that there are recognisable idioms for listeners to be able to identify, ‘Hey, this is music from so-and-so place’, and for composers to be able to express them in their own creations such that audiences will be able to identify. Composers also insert distinct musical features of the cultures that they experience into their music, such that upon listening, we can easily identify its origins. Have you found yourself describing pieces of music, ‘This sounds Chinese…’ ‘This is a tango…’ ‘This is gamelan’ and so forth?

These are features that make the music distinct, and for music to have that Singaporean-ness to it, ideally there ought to be such traits. Unfortunately our history as a peoples is short, hence we do not have such things as folk songs and dances and particular rhythms that mark music from this part of the world. Perhaps xinyao might one day make it as Singaporean music, but then again, the musical language of xinyao is ‘everywhere’ and hence leads to ‘nowhere’ (borrowing the Geographical concept of placelessness). The lyrics of xinyao songs could be stripped and made over with another set of lyrics, say a sappy love ballad, and the tune would be lost into placelessness – it’s just another tune, there’s nothing Singaporean about it.

Instead, we should then turn to the themes in music – themes as in titles and lyrics and objects of portrayal. This is perhaps the first step in establishing an identity for the music. For instance, I write about the Singapore River. Immediately we can identify it as a piece of music from Singapore. I accentuate this theme by introducing characteristics in the music that serve to conjure an audio (and hopefully visual!) image of the Singapore River. Perhaps I might imitate the sound of bumboats?

Now you may say I am contradicting my earlier statement that we lack a musical language that is distinguishable. Yes, we do not have a distinguishable music language or timbre; hence we need a theme as a root. Let’s put this in context: let’s say there’s a piece called ABC, and while listening to it, you suddenly realise… ‘Wait a moment – this sounds like Celtic music…’ The fact that you can recognise Celtic music within a piece that does not specifically tell you it has anything to do with Ireland means: Celtic music is distinguishable!

Back to our piece of music: if you put gongs and drums and an erhu and it plays some stereotypical pentatonic-sounding thing, chances are you will not connect it to Singapore even though Singapore has a humongous Chinese population. You might think it’s from China. But, with a theme to the composition, the use of Chinese music (for instance) provides meaning to the work. Perhaps it’s a representation of the River Hong Bao Carnival? The use of musical influences is, at the same time, justified. The piece becomes a meaningful portrayal of the Singapore River as well as a representation of Singapore. A piece of Singapore music. Since we do not have an established musical language, let us identify ourselves thematically.

Please feel free to comment!

I see this post on Shimei's Facebook notes, which tickles me so much that I have to post it up... and tempt myself to come up with a few more composers' effects LOL


The Mozart Effect
A new report now suggests that the Mozart effect may be a fraud. For you hip urban professionals: no, playing Mozart for your designer baby may not improve his IQ or help him get into that exclusive pre-school. He’ll just have to be admitted to Harvard some other way.
Of course, we’re all better off for listening to Mozart purely for the pleasure of it. However, one wonders that if playing Mozart sonatas for little Hillary or Jason could boost their intelligence, what would happen if other composers were played in their developmental time?

LISZT EFFECT: Child speaks rapidly and extravagantly, but never really says anything important.

BRUCKNER EFFECT: Child speaks very slowly and repeats himself frequently. Gains reputation for profundity.

WAGNER EFFECT: Child becomes a megalomaniac. May eventually marry his sister.

MAHLER EFFECT: Child continually screams - at great length and volume that he’s dying.

SCHOENBERG EFFECT: Child never repeats a word until he’s used all the other words in his vocabulary. Sometimes talks backwards. Eventually, people stop listening to him. Child blames them for their inability to understand him.

BABBITT EFFECT: Child gibbers nonsense all the time. Eventually, people stop listening to him. Child doesn’t care because all his playmates think he’s cool.

IVES EFFECT: the child develops a remarkable ability to carry on several separate conversations at once.

GLASS EFFECT: the child tends to repeat himself over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

STRAVINSKY EFFECT: the child is prone to savage, guttural and profane outbursts that often lead to fighting and pandemonium in the preschool.

BRAHMS EFFECT: the child is able to speak beautifully as long as his sentences contain a multiple of three words (3, 6, 9, 12, etc). However, his sentences containing 4 or 8 words are strangely uninspired.

AND THEN OF COURSE, THE CAGE EFFECT — CHILD SAYS NOTHING FOR 4 MINUTES, 33 SECONDS. PREFERRED BY 9 OUT OF 10 CLASSROOM TEACHERS.

* * *

And then I add a few more:

DEBUSSY EFFECT: child’s vision is extremely hazy with continuous complains of mist before the eyes, speech tends to be peppered with déjà vu

SHOSTAKOVICH EFFECT: child will have a history of trauma, beware of rebeliious tendencies.

BACH EFFECT: child is a mathematical genius... and very anal too

SIBELIUS EFFECT: child becomes icy cold, loves the bleak and barren

RACHMANINOFF EFFECT: child grows to become a crooner

MUSSORGSKY EFFECT: child eventually learns that the spirit is mightier than the pen

What!? Are they serious? At least you don't finish off with a Bachelor's degree...



Singapore Opens Matchmaking Institute in May
Source: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20080409/tap-340124-231650b.html


SINGAPORE: Singapore will have a new institute that provides matchmaking services from next month.

Called the Matchmaking Institute Southeast Asia, it also provides training to matchmaking companies.

Finding love is getting more difficult because many Singaporeans simply do not have the time. So the new matchmaking institute aims to give singles a hand.

The Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) received 44 feedback and queries about matchmaking agencies in 2007. This was up from 37 in 2006 and just 16 the year before. Most were complaints about unsatisfactory services.

A key concern among customers is how their personal data will be used. So the institute plans to have two databases, both accessible with consent. One will hold all the personal information submitted by interested singles, and another will be shared with companies.

‘All the companies or matchmakers... have to let their clients know that some of the information, but not (their) personal information or contact information, might be shared with other matchmakers,’ said Violet Lim, Executive Director, Matchmaking Institute Southeast Asia.

The new institute aims to raise the standards of matchmaking service in Singapore. It is offering a S$1,000 scholarship to the first 10 people to sign up for the courses offered.

Currently, more than 200 businesses are registered with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority providing friendship, matchmaking and dating services, up from 192 in April last year. — CNA /ls

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: MY STROKE OF INSIGHT
Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

(Iceball has written very understandable accompanying notes for those who might be unfamiliar with the medical terms: http://snowbellsring.blogspot.com/: A Stroke of Nirvana)

I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia. And as a sister and as a scientist, I wanted to understand, why is it that I can take my dreams, I can connect them to my reality, and I can make my dreams come true -- what is it about my brother’s brain and his schizophrenia that he cannot connect his dreams to a common, shared reality, so they instead become delusions?

So I dedicated my career to research into the severe mental illnesses. And I moved from my home state of Indiana to Boston where I was working in the lab of Dr. Francine Benes, in the Harvard Department of Psychiatry. And in the lab, we were asking the question, What are the biological differences between the brains of individuals who would be diagnosed as normal control, as compared to the brains of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective, or bipolar disorder?

So we were essentially mapping the microcircuitry of the brain, which cells are communicating with which cells, with which chemicals, and then with what quantities of those chemicals. So there was a lot of meaning in my life because I was performing this kind of research during the day. But then in the evenings and on the weekends I traveled as an advocate for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

But on the morning of December 10 1996 I woke up to discover that I had a brain disorder of my own. A blood vessel exploded in the left half of my brain. And in the course of four hours I watched my brain completely deteriorate in its ability to process all information. On the morning of the hemorrhage I could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of my life. I essentially became an infant in a woman’s body.

If you’ve ever seen a human brain, it’s obvious that the two hemispheres are completely separate from one another. And I have brought for you a real human brain. [Thanks.] So, this is a real human brain. This is the front of the brain, the back of the brain with a spinal cord hanging down, and this is how it would be positioned inside of my head. And when you look at the brain, it’s obvious that the two cerebral cortices are completely separate from one another. For those of you who understand computers, our right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor. While our left hemisphere functions like a serial processor. The two hemispheres do communicate with one another through the corpus collosum, which is made up of some 300 million axonal fibers. But other than that, the two hemispheres are completely separate. Because they process information differently, each hemisphere thinks about different things, they care about different things, and dare I say, they have very different personalities. [Excuse me. Thank you. It’s been a joy.]

Our right hemisphere is all about this present moment. It’s all about right here right now. Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information in the form of energy streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems. And then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like. What this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like. I am an energy being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, all we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect. We are whole. And we are beautiful.

My left hemisphere is a very different place. Our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past, and it’s all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment. And start picking details and more details and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information. Associates it with everything in the past we’ve ever learned and projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It’s that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It’s that little voice that says to me, “Hey, you gotta remember to pick up bananas on your way home, and eat ‘em in the morning.” It’s that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. But perhaps most important, it’s that little voice that says to me, “I am. I am.” And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me “I am,” I become separate. I become a single solid individual separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you. And this was the portion of my brain that I lost on the morning of my stroke.

On the morning of the stroke, I woke up to a pounding pain behind my left eye. And it was the kind of pain, caustic pain, that you get when you bite into ice cream. And it just gripped me and then it released me. Then it just gripped me and then released me. And it was very unusual for me to experience any kind of pain, so I thought OK, I’ll just start my normal routine. So I got up and I jumped onto my cardio glider, which is a full-body exercise machine. And I’m jamming away on this thing, and I’m realizing that my hands looked like primitive claws grasping onto the bar. I thought “that’s very peculiar” and I looked down at my body and I thought, “whoa, I’m a weird-looking thing.” And it was as though my consciousness had shifted away from my normal perception of reality, where I’m the person on the machine having the experience, to some esoteric space where I’m witnessing myself having this experience.

And it was all every peculiar and my headache was just getting worse, so I get off the machine, and I’m walking across my living room floor, and I realize that everything inside of my body has slowed way down. And every step is very rigid and very deliberate. There’s no fluidity to my pace, and there’s this constriction in my area of perceptions so I’m just focused on internal systems. And I’m standing in my bathroom getting ready to step into the shower and I could actually hear the dialog inside of my body. I heard a little voice saying, “OK, you muscles, you gotta contract, you muscles you relax.”

And I lost my balance and I’m propped up against the wall. And I look down at my arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can’t define where I begin and where I end. Because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy. Energy. And I’m asking myself, “What is wrong with me, what is going on?” And in that moment, my brain chatter, my left hemisphere brain chatter went totally silent. Just like someone took a remote control and pushed the mute button and -- total silence.

And at first I was shocked to find myself inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful there.

Then all of a sudden my left hemisphere comes back online and it says to me, “Hey! we got a problem, we got a problem, we gotta get some help.” So it’s like, OK, OK, I got a problem, but then I immediately drifted right back out into the consciousness, and I affectionately referred to this space as La La Land. But it was beautiful there. Imagine what it would be like to be totally disconnected from your brain chatter that connects you to the external world. So here I am in this space and any stress related to my, to my job, it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and the many stressors related to any of those, they were gone. I felt a sense of peacefulness. And imagine what it would feel like to lose 37 years of emotional baggage! I felt euphoria. Euphoria was beautiful -- and then my left hemisphere comes online and it says “Hey! you’ve got to pay attention, we’ve got to get help,” and I’m thinking, “I got to get help, I gotta focus.” So I get out of the shower and I mechanically dress and I’m walking around my apartment, and I’m thinking, “I gotta get to work, I gotta get to work, can I drive? can I drive?”

And in that moment my right arm went totally paralyzed by my side. And I realized, “Oh my gosh! I’m having a stroke! I’m having a stroke!” And the next thing my brain says to me is, “Wow! This is so cool. This is so cool. How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain from the inside out?”

And then it crosses my mind: “But I’m a very busy woman. I don’t have time for a stroke!” So I’m like, “OK, I can’t stop the stroke from happening so I’ll do this for a week or two, and then I’ll get back to my routine, OK.”

So I gotta call help, I gotta call work. I couldn’t remember the number at work, so I remembered, in my office I had a business card with my number on it. So I go in my business room, I pull out a 3-inch stack of business cards. And I’m looking at the card on top, and even though I could see clearly in my mind’s eye what my business card looked like, I couldn’t tell if this was my card or not, because all I could see were pixels. And the pixels of the words blended with the pixels of the background and the pixels of the symbols, and I just couldn’t tell. And I would wait for what I call a wave of clarity. And in that moment, I would be able to reattach to normal reality and I could tell, that’s not the card, that’s not the card, that’s not the card. It took me 45 minutes to get one inch down inside of that stack of cards.

In the meantime, for 45 minutes the hemorrhage is getting bigger in my left hemisphere. I do not understand numbers, I do not understand the telephone, but it’s the only plan I have. So I take the phone pad and I put it right here, I’d take the business card, I’d put it right here, and I’m matching the shape of the squiggles on the card to the shape of the squiggles on the phone pad. But then I would drift back out into La La Land, and not remember when I come back if I’d already dialed those numbers.

So I had to wield my paralyzed arm like a stump, and cover the numbers as I went along and pushed them, so that as I would come back to normal reality I’d be able to tell, yes, I’ve already dialed that number. Eventually the whole number gets dialed, and I’m listening to the phone, and my colleague picks up the phone and he says to me, “Whoo woo wooo woo woo.” [laughter] And I think to myself, “Oh my gosh, he sounds like a golden retriever!” And so I say to him, clear in my mind I say to him. “This is Jill! I need help!” And what comes out of my voice is, “Whoo woo wooo woo woo.” I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh, I sound like a golden retriever.” So I couldn’t know, I didn’t know that I couldn’t speak or understand language until I tried.

So he recognizes that I need help, and he gets me help. And a little while later, I am riding in an ambulance from one hospital across Boston to Mass General Hospital. And I curl up into a little fetal ball. And just like a balloon with the last bit of air just, just right out of the balloon I felt my energy lift and I felt my spirit surrender. And in that moment I knew that I was no longer the choreographer of my life. And either the doctors rescue my body and give me a second chance at life or this was perhaps my moment of transition.

When I awoke later that afternoon I was shocked to discover that I was still alive. When I felt my spirit surrender, I said goodbye to my life, and my mind is now suspended between two very opposite planes of reality. Stimulation coming in through my sensory systems felt like pure pain. Light burned my brain like wildfire and sounds were so loud and chaotic that I could not pick a voice out from the background noise and I just wanted to escape. Because I could not identify the position of my body in space, I felt enormous and expensive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through the sea of silent euphoria. Harmonic. I remember thinking there’s no way I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.

But I realized “But I’m still alive! I’m still alive and I have found Nirvana. And if I have found Nirvana and I’m still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana.” I picture a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time. And that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace. And then I realized what a tremendous gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this could be to how we live our lives. And it motivated me to recover.

Two and a half weeks after the hemorrhage, the surgeons went in and they removed a blood clot the size of a golf ball that was pushing on my language centers. Here I am with my mama, who’s a true angel in my life. It took me eight years to completely recover.

So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the “we” inside of me.

Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.

Morte means 'death' in French.

So forte means 'frightened to death'


(Kidding lah, forte actually means 'loud' in Italian - it's not even French!)