— aka.spvn

So, #stopkony is trending everywhere, with people spreading around that 30 minute long video put out by an American NGO about a horrible warlord in Uganda that’s slaughtering people, causing misery, kidnapping children, etc. It’s a horrible situation, no doubt, and yes he should be stopped. But seriously, clicking “Like” and “Share” isn’t doing a single thing to help him.

Simply being aware doesn’t solve the problem

First off, even the NGO themselves stated that the goal was to pressure the US government into dumping resources into helping to stop this evil-doer. Yes, spreading awareness is the first step to getting policy-makers to listen up, but the ultimate goal is to effect changes in policy, not just spread awareness. It’s pretty annoying when people think they’re suddenly humanitarians just because they shared a video with tons of people and that they’re actually helping to alleviate the situation over there. No, you’re not. Spreading awareness is just a stepping stone to your final goal of stopping this madman. If you don’t take the extra step to contact policy makers or donate money or something, you’re not helping that much. For sure, you’re helping to spread awareness about the issue, but that’s it. You’re not stopping the guy.

Saying that “spreading awareness” causes Kony to stop his violent actions is like saying buying home bread and ham will cause a sandwich to make itself.

Awareness is necessary, no doubt

Don’t get me wrong, having awareness of what’s going on in the world is definitely a really great thing. But it’s just like how everyone is aware that millions of kids in Africa are starving, dying of illnesses that are easily treatable in more developed countries. We’re aware of them for sure, and we certainly do feel sorry for their plight, but we don’t think we’re actually doing anything to help them simply by being aware and being sorry for them. If we spread an image of a starving African kid on Facebook, we don’t think we’re actually helping that kid get food do we?

But when it’s an organised campaign by a NGO, we feel like we’re part of this cause just because we “Share” their Youtube video, we feel like humanitarians. But in all honesty, we really aren’t.

So yes, thank you for letting me know this situation is happening, but don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re actually stopping Kony simply by “Liking” the video.

Not to mention we’re a country of just 5 million people

So, now that we’ve established that getting the attention of policy makers is the only way we can actively help alleviate the situation, let’s discuss if us Singaporeans can actually do anything. Can anybody really envision a Singaporean calling up their MP’s office, asking them if our government is going to do anything about Kony? Is anybody really going to attend the next Meet the MP session to express concern about the situation in Uganda (even though he’s probably not even in Uganda anymore, more on that later)? Maybe a few might? But not many.

The fact is that we’re a tiny country that doesn’t have much resources to begin with. We have plenty of problems to deal with here in our own country. We have very little say in the international stage when it comes to situations like these. Honestly it’s pretty damn unlikely our government is going to actively do anything about Kony, and rightfully so.

Money money money

There is one way individual Singaporeans can help of course, and that’s to donate to the NGO who put out that video, Invisible Children, and hope that your funds do make a difference in stopping Kony through the actions of this organisation. If you do donate, more power to you, it’s great that you’re helping with money. Just know that this NGO doesn’t actually spend that much on actual aid to begin with (just 32% actually). They’re much more focused on spreading awareness. A really large part of their funds goes to stuff like filmmaking and travelling expenses, because the goal of this particular NGO is more to raise awareness rather than actually provide aid. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, you need some organisations to be focused on spreading awareness.

Not to mention it’d be pretty ridiculous to think that a NGO would just take the funds and hire some kind of private military to take down Kony, seeing as how that’s really the only way to actively bring him to justice.

Get your facts straight

Please know that all NGOs, despite their desire to do good in this world, will all at the end of the day have some form of agenda. It’s the reason why so many activist groups target Apple when it comes to working conditions in Foxconn factories in China, even though dozens of other big tech companies use Foxconn as well, and many other factories in China have even worse conditions. No, they target Apple because they’re the biggest target out there by far, everyone relates to them because so many people have an iPhone.

Now, I don’t know what agenda Invisible Children has at all, maybe they don’t have any, but then it begs the question as to why most of their video was pretty factually inaccurate to begin with. After getting all riled up about the video, it’ll come as quite a bummer that most of it is pretty factually inaccurate to begin with. There are many reports that Kony hasn’t even been in Uganda for about 6 years, and that this army of his that supposedly numbers in the tens of thousands probably only numbers in the hundreds now.

To quote Ugandan journalist Angelo Izama:

“To call the campaign a misrepresentation is an understatement. While it draws attention to the fact that Kony, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2005, is still on the loose, its portrayal of his alleged crimes in Northern Uganda are from a bygone era. At the height of the war between especially 1999 and 2004, large hordes of children took refuge on the streets of Gulu town to escape the horrors of abduction and brutal conscription to the ranks of the LRA. Today most of these children are semi-adults. Many are still on the streets unemployed. Gulu has the highest numbers of child prostitutes in Uganda. It also has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis.

If six years ago children in Uganda would have feared the hell of being part of the LRA, a well documented reality already, today the real invisible children are those suffering from “Nodding Disease”. Over 4000 children are victims of this incurable debilitating condition. It’s a neurological disease that has baffled world scientists and attacks mainly children from the most war affected districts of Kitgum, Pader and Gulu.”

Full article here.

So basically everyone got all riled up and spammed that “Share” button for something that ended 6 years ago… Oh well…

I’m not a fan of Korean music (even though Char absolutely adores SNSD). For me, it suffers from the same problems that Chinese music suffers from: everything sounds the same. Every single Korean song I’ve heard is either a) ballad or b) Pop. And it doesn’t help that almost all of their voices sound almost identical to one another.

Don’t get me mistaken, they all sound good, but they sound the same. Come to think of it that’s also probably because plenty of the Korean groups are managed by just a couple huge music companies. These profit-driven assholes companies treat these bands as investments and entities rather than actual artists or musicians. You get to see glimpses of the potential some of them have when there are those rare lines in a couple of songs that force them to really sing. But unfortunately they’re stuck with boring ol’, almost kiddish sounding K-pop songs most of the time. And think about it, they have to fly around the world, performing these same few songs with those same few dance choreographies over and over and over again. Sure other musicians perform the same old songs during their concerts as well, but most of them are “true” (for lack of a better word) musicians. Some of them write their own songs, others are at least given some form of artistic freedom to interprete the song they’re given in their own way. In some way or another, these artists at least feel emotionally invested in the music they put out. Korean bands on the other hand feel like they’re just given the lyrics, the song, the choreography and told to go memorise and practise.

Add on top of that the fact that some of these performers have like 10 year contracts with their “management agencies” and you really have to wonder if they are truly happy with what they’re doing. And then you have Singaporean kids as young as 11 years old raring to fly to Korea to go through ardious training for something they might ultimately hate.

It’s almost as if Korean music in the 2010s is in the same state that Western music was in the 1990s, when boy bands were all the rage. I generally had the feeling that boy bands also suffered from the “take-this-song-and-memorise-and-practise” syndrome. They were relatively good singers, but they weren’t genuine artists, which is why the whole boy band trend has fizzled out and died. Plenty of people can sing, what the people want are truely talented musicians. You just don’t associate a Backstreet Boys’ song with the band itself the same way you associate, say, Thriller with Michael Jackson. It doesn’t matter that Michael Jackson had no invovlement in writing the song, what matters is that he took it and made it his own, through and through. No other artist could perform that song and achieve the same results. On the other hand, I think if you got SNSD to record Wondergirls’ “Nobody”, the average person wouldn’t be able to discern much of a difference.

Despite (what I think are) shortcomings of Korean music as a whole, it is absolutely astounding the level of influence it has had in Singapore. The J-pop wave kind of hit Singapore a couple years back, and while I wasn’t old enough back then, I generally got the feeling that only a niche group really got into Jap music. But now with the whole K-pop wave, almost everyone knows at least a couple of people who are gi-normous fans of these Korean bands. Interestingly enough, Korean girl bands are way more popular than their male counterparts. While the boy bands of the 90s had a predominantly female fan base, Korean girl bands have the benefit of having ardent male and female fans alike. Guys love them because they’re absolutely gorgeous, sing well and dance amazingly well. Girls like them because… well… they’re absolutely gorgeous, sing well and dance amazingly well.

For that reason, I think Korean bands are going to be around for quite some time. The fact that their fan base could potentially be twice that of those good ol’ boy bands means a much larger target audience and thus more people to buy their albums and attend their concerts. Couple that with the fact that those greedy “talent agencies” are constantly recruiting new kids and putting them through years and years of training, pumping out band after band after band, resulting in a never-ending influx of new bands. To them, even if some bands fail to gain any traction, so what? Out of the dozens of bands they pump out, surely at least a couple of them will achieve the level of success that SNSD has. (Though you really do have to wonder what happens to those bands that get cast aside, are their contracts automatically revoked or something?) And those few investments will probably provide enough returns to earn them a handsome profit.

Ultimately though, I think that this formulaic, scientific and rigid approach to producing “music” and “artists” will be the downfall of the Korean music industry in the near future. How an entire country worth of talented artists all produce similar sounding music just astounds me. Unless the industry realises that they can’t just rely on this one “shtick” to sell albums and recognise the need to evolve and progress past the pop genre, I don’t expect any of these songs to be considered “classics” decades from now.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and SNSD songs will live on as timeless classics forever and ever. Oh the horror…

P.S. They are GORGEOUS though:

So GE2011 is over and I think this GE deserves more than the single sentence blog post I gave for the last GE. Plenty of thoughts on what many people consider a watershed moment in Singapore politics.

Electoral Divisions

Before going into any specifics, I think the way in which Electoral Divisions are drawn up every election is kind of… interesting.

Take a look at the two SMCs I’ve coloured in above. Yuhua SMC and Bukit Panjang SMC. Why in the world are they so precisely cut out of the bigger GRCs that completely surround them?

Yuhua SMC was just formed for this election while Bukit Panjang SMC was drawn up only during the last election. And both SMCs were won by PAP this time round with 66% of the votes, which is a relatively comfortable win as compared to other constituencies.

If randomly cutting out portions of a GRC to form random SMCs is so easy to do, then there’s a perfect solution to get George Yeo back into parliament next election. Cut out a tiny portion of Aljunied GRC, name it like “George Yeo SMC” and let him run there to walkover.

Aljunied

Not surprising that WP won Aljunied in my opinion, despite how popular George Yeo is. Though I believe that if our media hadn’t branded the Aljunied WP team as the "Dream Team", they wouldn’t have won. Interesting.

I’m kind of glad that the WP team finally got a GRC, we really do need more opposition in parliament. However it is such a shame to see George Yeo go. Xiaxue’s posts and other stuff I’ve read have really convinced me that it’s such a shame that George Yeo is going.

There’s been speculation that George Yeo was a scapegoat due to infighting within the PAP. That’s a redonkulous theory IMO. George Yeo is too awesome a Foreign Minister for him to not be recognised by the PAP. He’s been contesting in Aljunied since forever. WP just decided to go all-out in this GRC because it secured 44% of the votes last election, the closest any opposition party had ever come to winning a GRC. It’s just unfortunate that George Yeo had to be the victim in order for a opposition party to win a GRC.

Potong Pasir

I had expected Potong Pasir to finally go to PAP this round, though not by that close a margin. Mr Chiam’s stroke is obviously taking its toll on him (Here’s a video of him before, and after his stroke). I think the fact that he can’t even stand up straight and can barely speak coherently (let alone convincingly) anymore caused people to lose confidence in the SPP. Add to that the fact that its his wife running in Potong Pasir and not him, and it’s pretty obvious that the man in white would get that SMC.

It is really really shocking to me however how close the fight was. PAP garnered 50.3% of the votes, winning by just over 100 votes. If just a fraction of 200+ spoilt votes had gone to SPP, they would have won. What a shame. It’s obvious how much his supporters love him, and while I don’t really know him, I’ve heard plenty of good things about him. So it’s sad to see him go. Looking at the condition of his health, I doubt he’ll be able to put up a good fight in the next round of elections.

It’s pretty obvious how passionate he is. This is the makeshift cubicle at one of the void decks that he has to use for his Meet-the-People sessions. While most other MPs have proper air-conditioned offices for such meetings, he’s been stuck with this “office” for the past few decades.

It’ll be interesting to see if the new Potong Pasir MP from PAP, Mr Sitoh Yih Pin continues to use this cubicle, or moves to an air-conditioned office.

Hougang

Hougang’s results were also really really interesting. I was expecting Hougang to go to WP by a lower margin as compared to previous years. However, despite Mr Low moving to Aljunied, WP’s Mr Law Shin Leong held on to Hougang SMC with the highest percentage of votes (64%) ever since WP got the SMC in 1991. I think it really goes to show how much faith the people of Hougang have in not just Mr Low, but the Worker’s Party as a whole.

Joo Chiat

Just a quick note on what I think is the most surprising result of the night. The PAP got Joo Chiat SMC by just ONE percent. That’s just insane. Out of absolutely nowhere, WP almost got a PAP stronghold. PAP got 65% of the votes in Joo Chiat in 2006, and roughly 80% for every preceeding election since 1972. Suddenly they only get 51% of the votes?! Seems like no one saw that one coming. Joo Chiat SMC might cease to exist in 5 years.

On the whole

There’s still other stuff I have in my head, but I can’t be bothered to list them all down. Just a couple of stuff to round up this post.

It’s sad to hear so many opposition candidates go “If this SMC/GRC is still around in 5 years, I’ll come back and contest”. I don’t think any other country in the world has its election divisions redrawn so drastically every couple of years.

PAP has gotten the lowest percentage of the popular vote since independence in 1965 with just 60%. A very clear downward trend. They have got to be concerned about that figure.

Finally, am I anti-PAP? I don’t think so. I’m more “pro-more-opposition-voices-in-parliament”, which is why I’d rather have 5 strong opposition candidates in parliament than one very strong PAP foreign minister. PAP’s scare tactics and the way they treat us all like babies is exceedingly annoying, but you cannot deny they’ve been doing an excellent job at governing our country.

Their focus on nothing but the economy and GDP growth is a little weird as well. Does so much emphasis need to be placed on the economy that other things like housing are left behind? Though I do agree that Singapore is in a very precarious position. If other small countries like Denmark fail, they have the EU net to catch them. If we fail, nobody’s going to catch us. As I’m no economist, I can’t say for sure if our economy is the one and only yardstick to determine if Singapore can survive or not. Though I really do have doubts over PAP’s constant assertions that Singapore will plunge into chaos and turmoil the moment our economy falters or if opposition members get into government.

If the PAP changes in the next five years and stops treating us all like idiots, maybe I’ll start supporting them. Part of the reason why I kind of support the opposition is not so much that I thing they’re awesome, but that I cannot stand the kind of things PAP says (“repent if you vote for opposition”).

Things are going to get really exciting five years from now, when I’m actually eligible to vote. Even with 6 opposition members in parliament, I think the next five years are going to remain relatively boring.

Seeing how much I loved last year’s Social Network, I decided to visit one of David Fincher’s earlier movies, the much acclaimed Se7en. Going in, I had no idea what to expect from the movie, except that it was kind of a really dark cop drama. But after watching it, I can safely say this about Se7en: it’s an amazing film, and I kind of hate it.

One of the things that drew me to the film was the cast: Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt in the main roles, both of whom put up amazing performances as per usual. The plot itself started off really well. The premise of the film is this series of seven murders, each symbolising one of the seven deadly sins, while Freeman and Pitt race against the clock to apprehend the serial killer. Neat stuff. Though it’s evident from the get-go that this movie was going to have really dark themes to it. It’s sort of a “horror” film according to Wikipedia, but everything’s more tense rather than horrifying. No doubt, some scenes are pretty gross, though they’re all artfully shot such that they accentuate rather than take away from the story.

Not to mention there’s this foot chase in the middle of the film, which might be one of the greatest foot chases of all time. Amazingly tense. Largely due to the fact that you have a cop chasing down a criminal that has outsmarted everyone at every turn, you have no idea what the smart alec was going to do.

At the end of the day though, this movie is just too damn depressing for me. Great premise, great plot, great twists in the story, really nicely shot. But ultimately not a very pleasant movie to watch. The way the plot unravels, and especially the ending, is just so bleak. Nothing good ever happens to the good guys throughout the movie. It doesn’t help that none of the characters (even the good guys) appeal to me. The extent to which the characters are fleshed out reach the bare minimum for them to have any character to begin with, and with any lesser actors everything would have completely fallen apart.

The random conversations between characters that are inserted between plot scenes are sort of “philosophical” in nature, and you can kind of feel the writers trying to shoehorn themes into random conversations that have almost nothing to do with the main plot. Of course these kinds of “irrelevant” conversations are kind of a staple of movies from the ’90s.

Anyway, I’ll say it again. This is a really great movie, well-deserving of its critical acclaim. And I hate it.

So in keeping with my new year’s resolution about writing more, I’ve been constantly thinking of what to blog. Then (as I tweeted), a few days ago I had a brilliant idea to blog about while peeing. Alas, I somehow managed to forgot what it was by the time I left the toilet… till now that is. I suddenly remembered the topic I wanted to blog about:

Our attention span is getting way shorter, and we are seriously impatient.

With the Internet and everything, I sometimes wonder how the hell people of ye olde days could survive. I’ve read and watched Pride and Prejudice multiple times, and I simply cannot fathom how people then passed their time. I mean all they ever seemed to do was:

• Dress up in the most extravagent way possible
• Read tons and tons of really thick books
• Spend a ton of time on meals
• Talk to each other about everything, in the longest manner possible

I mean one brilliant example of how boring their lives were in that book was the part where Elizabeth was chatting with some other woman (can’t remember who) in Bingley’s library. The two girls can’t even start talking right off the bat. They got to sit down in a lady-like (pompous) manner, then the other girl had to “invite” Elizabeth to walk AROUND THE FREAKING ROOM to chat with her (which means they can’t go up to each other and say “Hi!” but have to start off with “May I say “Hi” to you?”). So they get up and start walking around the tiny room talking about something boring for awhile, then Bingley comments lamely about how he was observing their “form” as they were walking, and then the- zzzZZZzzz…

And yet somehow none of them actually died of boredom (or did they?). Fast forward to today and we can’t even write properly anymore. I mean every1 nowadays wanna rite in teh shortest way possible, lol.

It all started with SMSing I’m guessing, trying to squeeze everything within 160 characters and with the minimum keystrokes possible so our hands wouldn’t cramp up. Then even with full fledged keyboards people can’t be bothered to type properly, till the point that we have to come out with acronyms for everything. Brb, afk, lol, ttyl, omg, wtf, etc. It won’t be long before we come up with stuff like ADCOMSUBORDCOMPHIBSPAC (which by the way is actually a real acronym).

The Internet only seems to encourage our impatient attitude. First came the whole concept of “microblogging”, then Twitter came along and more or less dominated that arena, feeding on people’s desires to consume bite-sized amounts of data at a very rapid pace. For many people, Twitter is where they get their daily news, not the long, in-depth reports and articles on the New York Times. Why waste precious time reading a long report when you can just get the whole story summed up in under 140 characters? Then Tumblr was born to encourage short-form blogging (e.g. throwing a picture in a post without offering any commentary whatsoever). Then we have Youtube, which even encourages its own high-profile video uploaders to post stuff that’s less than 5 minutes long becuase the average user won’t bother with anything longer than that. Not to mention most of the multi-million viewed videos are less than a minute long.

And while Charles Bingley could spend his whole life just reading books, it’s shocking how few people still enjoy reading. The next time you get on the train take a look at how many people are reading books vs. watching videos on their iPhones (or one of those ridiculous “portable” DVD players). Books used to be one of the best ways to entertain ourselves on long journeys, but ever since our phones became “smart”, books just seem so boring in comparison.

But of course the opposite can be argued for books. It’s probably the only remaining form of media that doesn’t provide immediate gratification (compared to say, Twitter, movies, video games) and yet still remains exceedingly popular. Though I have to say the number of people I know that read on a regular basis is startlingly low. Certainly way lower than what they were during Charles Bingley’s era.

I mean the fact that I can’t even focus on finishing this whole post in one sitting (because I’m being distracted by MSN convos and other websites) just goes to show how much the world we live in today is trying its absolute best to distract us from whatever we’re doing. Now if only I could concentrate long enough to fini