Inquisited.com

Dear Yngwie

I just bought you latest album and have to say it totally blew me away. The new tracks are just pure badass awesomeness - I really digged “Caprici Di Diablo” and “Death Dealer” for all the incredible speed and signature classical overtones you’re famous for. “Eleventh Hour” with its exotic eastern vibes rocked, too. Once again, you’ve reminded us why you’re still the patron saint of neoclassical metal. As Borat would say, very naiiice.

Nevermind the fact that all your songs basically use the same chord progressions, same modulations, the same predictable arpeggio runs, harmonic minor sweeps, and horribly cheesy lyrics. But alright, I guess no one really listens to your songs for the lyrics anyway - that would be a lot like reading FHM for financial advice… or watching a porno for the plot. Whatever, you get the idea.

I do have one request, though: Change the damn album art already. Seriously dude, pulling a constipated look while posing with your guitar get a bit old after a while, don’t you think? I mean, look at some of your album covers over the years:

Rising Force - 1984

Marching Out - 1985

Trilogy - 1986 - Very Tenacious D-isque

Odyssey - 1988

Fire and Ice - 1992

Magnum Opus - 1995

Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra in E Flat Minor Op. 1 - 1998 - That’s one long-ass album title

Perpetual Flame - 2008 - Your most constipated look yet

See a pattern here? I don’t know about you, but I for one would like to see a wee bit more creativity. The cheese factor is through the roof. Not to mention that you’re like at least 15 years older than what you appear on the cover of “Perpetual Flame”. And what’s up with the headbanger hairstyle and leather outfit? That’s so 20 years ago man.

But whatever. Keep doing what you do, malm. Rock on, and I’ll see you in Singapore the next time you tour asia.

Your fan,
David

Sarah Palin’s gaffe about the vice president’s putative role of being “in charge” of the US senate incited a substantial degree of indignity (largely among the senators themselves). But it does raise an interesting question: who’s “in charge” of the country as a whole anyway? Its easy to pin it all on the man in the oval office: the grey-haired middle aged man of impeccable moral standing Americans call president. He’s the man who directs national policies. He’s the man who raises or lower taxes. He’s the man who conducts diplomacy and wages war.

But personally I find such a view to be overly simplistic. The nature of American politics, much like God, works in mysterious ways. Former president Gerald Ford once put forward a theory called the “imperilled presidency” where he argued that the president is not granted nearly enough executive power to effectively push policies in office. According to Ford:

[A] principal weakness in the presidency is the inability of the White House to maintain control over the large federal bureaucracy. There is nothing more frustrating for a President than to issue an order to a Cabinet officer, and then find that, when the order gets out in the field, it is totally mutilated.

Historically, the president of the USA has acted as the commander in chief of the armed forces. But since the 1970s, there has been increasing limitations on his control over foreign policy. On paper, the president handles explicit diplomatic dealings with other heads of states, but there is much that he can’t control. For instance, when the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, China officials offered sharp rebukes and warned of serious rammifications to relationships between the two countries (which did pan out in the form of cancelled trade and military agreements).

Did George W. Bush have any control over this matter? I think not. Yes, he was present at the medal presentation ceremony. Yes, he personally congratulated the Dalai Lama. But ultimately it was congress that collectively decided to hand out the award, and this was something G.W could not veto. The same applies to arms sales. Its congress and the senate (which is, in turn, hugely influenced by lobbyists, think tanks and industrial connections), not the president that calls the shots. And this seems to be something that authoritarian countries with centralized governments don’t understand, and much to their empty frustration at the incumbent president comes to naught.

In domestic policy, the president is again constricted by the legislative branches of the government, and especially so if an opposing party is in control - like what Bill Clinton faced in the 90s with an uncooperative republican senate. Here again, a complex interwoven conglomerate of interest groups vie for control, and president himself is obliged to act long party and voter lines, and not what is necessarily in the best interests of the country as a whole.

Rarely have American presidents been representations of anything other than the prevailing socio-political zeitgist (A select few who dared to challenge the status-quo such as Abraham Lincoln stand as notable and noble exceptions.) In other words, the American president is more an avatar and symbol of America, rather than a real agent of change. No doubt he may try to steer jauggernaut that is the USA, but there is much less than he can do than is generally assumed.

Normally, I pay a lot of attention to my dreams. I write them down first thing in the morning, draw similarities and patterns from previous nights, and reflect on them. I find it unfortunate that few other people do the same: after all, dreams are as much an integral part of our reality and existence as our waking life. Of course, some would dismiss this silly notion on the grounds that dreams aren’t “real”.

That would bring us to the deeply existential question of what we consider to be “real” in the first place. To me at least, living is about experiencing, and anything that brings about a new and unique experience is real enough.

Dreams speak to us, but only if we allow them to. Dreams or nightmares, they all have something to teach or show. But all that’s assuming that you remember your dreams at all, and I can’t if I’m too mentally fatigued which I have been for the past few months. Last night, the dreams returned. A weight has been lifted, and at long last we will dream again.

I’ve recently realized that my blogging patterns aren’t as erratic as I previously thought - my writing output seems directly correlated to bouts of melancholia and euphoria. When I’m pathologically happy (yes, it does happen), I tend to blog and emphatically argue my point on random social/scientific/political issues.When I’m melancholic, its much more introspective and personal. But its all the insipid emotion states in between that seem completely devoid of any creative potential. And unfortunately, much of my life exists precisely in that state which explains why this blog isn’t updated more frequently than it should.

But still, I’m glad to have discovered something about myself today, even if it was a “duh” moment that wasn’t particularly novel or exciting. Its good to know that even after 20-odd years you can still surprise yourself with the little things in life. Maybe the world isn’t so boring after all.

The book “Liar’s Poker” offers an insider’s (and often, unflattering) portrayal of Wall Street culture: It describes a community rampant with unscrupulous greed, and lifestyles so hedonistic it would make even Caligula envious. As a testament to their gargantuan egos, the investment and trading moguls of Wall Street style themselves as “Big Swinging Dicks” or “Masters of the Universe”.

According to Michael Lewis, there is great scorn and contempt for any job that earns anything less than a king’s ransom. Success on the street is determined much less by one’s finesse in advanced financial knowledge than the ability to manipulate, exploit, coerce and spend long hours under high-pressure situations screaming orders.

Obviously, I am no Warren Buffet. But even before the current financial crisis I found myself wondering how much of the (then) phenomenal profit accrued in investment banking could be attributed to financial virtuosity, and how much of it to creative accounting. After all, with the banks as powerful as they are, they can essentially write themselves blank checks: they persuade investors to throw in their entire life’s savings to purchase financial instruments that are incredibly risky and overvalued at best (and next to worthless at worst), charge exorbitant management fees, and then buy each others stocks and debts in a way that connects every single financial entity on the street like a giant chain letter to cover their collective backs. If one of them goes down, the entire financial market is fucked.

When the bubble inevitably bursts, the engineers of this financial house of cards walk away scott free with their obscenely generous severance packages, leaving the central banks, taxpayers and investors the foot the bill - the most prominent and recent example being the fall of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. Because of all the complex trades it had entered into with all the major banks on Wall Street, chaos would have resulted if the fund was allowed to fail. In the end, the Fed stepped in and brokered a deal between several major banks to bail out the ailing firm.

But the story has an unsatisfying epilogue. The founder LTCM, John Meriwether, walked away with a huge retirement package, and promptly raised $250 million of fresh capital to set up a new fund within a year of the collapse of LTCM. Wall Street financers, it appears, suffer from a serious case of investment amnesia. It seems we never learn and as a result pay, quite literally, for our ignorance.

Been swamped with work again. The most prodigious consumer of my spare time lately has been graduate school applications. Its such a formidable logistical nightmare applying to 8 different schools it almost makes assembling the space shuttle look like a walk in the park.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that there is no centralized system to handle applications and each school acts as if the applicant is applying EXCLUSIVELY to their school, which needless to say is an awesomely stupid assumption. This means that since each school requires 3 letters of recommendations, I have 24 individual snail-mail letters to track and monitor.

And for heaven’s sake graduate schools should stop asking retarded questions like “Why choose Stanford?”. Now I have a problem with this kind of question on 2 levels: Firstly, it a huge time waster for the applicant. Obviously, if Stanford had nothing to offer me I wouldn’t be applying there in the first place.

Secondly, I’m convinced its meant as nothing more than an ego boost for the admission committee. i.e 90% of our applicants think that our university has a world-renowned faculty, state of the art research facilities, situated in the perfect junction between academia and industry blah blah. Therefore it must be true.

Because nobody ever bullshits on their applications. *cough*

Imagine if I had to write 8 different essays waxing lyrical about the putative attractiveness of each program. Its exhausting to keep coming up with ever-more grandiloquent fluff and gets a bit ridiculous when I start reaching my “safety schools”.

“Why choose Pineappletart State University?”, you say? Because I’m out of options, dammit.

Just for kicks, I decided to search for “the meaning of life” on Google. The first result, as with many other queries these days, was the Wikipedia entry which was very… comprehensive (go see for yourself). It wasn’t quite the short, succinct answer I was looking for but close enough.

I can’t say what it was that made me turn to a search engine for metaphysical comfort, but it only goes to show how integral internet search has become to my life - Googling something, whether a cocktail recipe or synthesis of phosphatidylcholine, is second nature. Its almost like we’ve outsourced an entire portion of our brain to the internet. The Library of Alexandria was humanity’s first attempt at compiling the sum of all human knowledge. The Internet is our latest and greatest attempt.

Like a digital librarian, internet search facilitates the connection between a user’s query and his desired answer. But relationship between humanity and information retrieval has also fundamentally changed. A question that might have taken weeks of perusing at the local library to find scantly 10 years ago can now be answered in a matter of minutes, if not faster. In terms of knowledge organization, this represents nothing short of a quantum leap forward. 

That also got me thinking how the web itself might evolve in the future. Today, just about everyone is connected via home PCs, 3G Phones, PDAs and other devices. But the interface is still relatively clumsy - that is to say, you can only navigate and operate Google, Facebook, email, MSN messenger etc as fast as your 10 fingers can type. I think it would not be a stretch of imagination to say that in the near future, we will be plugged in directly to the net via an integrated neural interface (Its not science fiction anymore, people).

Its interesting to speculate how humanity might evolve when you’re able to instant message anyone in the world, anywhere at the speed of thought. Would that be any different, for all intents and purposes, from true telepathy? And why stop there? If you’re able to thought-communicate with someone, not why with a whole group of people? Could an entire nation connect their minds and form a singular consensus of thoughts? The concept of a “democratic government” would change radically, as would the fabric of society itself.

And would it be possible to download the sum of a person’s memories into a digital repository? Perhaps a repository that contains multiple memories. Maybe then even physical death can be cheated.

Its one day after Singapore’s 43rd national day, and I thought I’d spare a minute to reflect on the issue of national solidarity. Recently, I polled a small group of friends who had spent time abroad on whether they took pride on being Singaporean. The consensus was a resounding “not really”. I suspect they’re not alone in their views, given the nation’s strong Europhillic disposition.

This sentiment seems most pronounced among the nation’s intelligentsia (or at least those who consider themselves such), a good proportion of which have, or are considering moving overseas. Having actually lived abroad for more than half my life, I can say with some certainty that the grass is indeed greener on the other side. But the issue remains: A great deal of Singaporeans don’t identify with the country. Why might this be the case?

Part of the problem might have to do with the country’s colonial legacy, but the other part I think, is caused by the government’s incessant harping on how Singapore should always imitate that other country. How Singapore should be like the Swiss in banking, imitate the oh-so-refined accents of the Brits, the Brazilians in their swanky football skills or whatever. With annoying regularity, politicians beat on this to death at every chance they get. Its kind of like how your parents used to compare you to the geekiest kid in grade school: “why can’t you be more like perfect peter or smarty sandy?”. Remember how irritating that was? The other thing that was ever good for was deflating a kid’s confidence, or in this case, national pride.

Of course, the government’s line might be a natural consequence of Singapore’s collective low self-esteem, rather than the cause of it. But that’s still no excuse for the lack of inspiring leadership. A lot of government-sanctioned events and cultural festivities seem incredibly contrived and passé. Combined with the constant nagging on how the other kid’s always better and you have the perfect recipe for an insecure and outward-looking citizenry. One might argue that a national identity can only arise from acts of self-expression that are unrestrained from moralizing or politicizing. Only then will you have identifiable traits of true “Singaporean” culture that people can identify with and feel proud of.

Incidentally, this is reminiscent of a scene from the movie “Cool Runnings”, an inspiring flick about the first Jamaican Bobsled team to take part in the winter olympics. The captain of Jamaican team realizes that the swiss team is really good. In fact, he admires them so much that he tries to get his teammates to imitate the swiss in every single aspect of bobsledding. The idea, of course, is that if they all act swiss they’ll be just as successful. Needless to say, his fellow bobsledders don’t appreciate the posing and the team doesn’t get very far.

One of his teammates finally speaks up.

“All I’m saying, man, is if we walk Jamaican, talk Jamaican, and is Jamaican, then we sure as hell better bobsled Jamaican.”

And that is the crux of the issue. Just like it can with a bobsled team, morale and make or break a nation. Recognizing and appreciating culture has a lot to do with this. Since no two countries will ever develop in the exact same way, trying to imitate another blindly would be a lot like the Jamaican bobsled team counting down in German. Let a thousand flowers boom and have faith that Singapore will forge its own way guided by its own culture. The Swiss will tread their own path. The British will tread their own path. The Jamaicans will tread their own path.

So must Singaporeans.

Yesterday night, I took a long bus ride home from other side of the island. I could have taken a cab and cut down my travel time by a few orders of magnitude. Ordinarily, that’s what I would have done because I’m a sucker for efficiency. But for some reason I didn’t. Last night was different.

The bus was one of the older ones, meaning it had no air conditioning and the rumbling and rattlings of its antiquated engine could heard as distinctly as it could be felt. It was also slow, but I didn’t care. The bus was vacant, so I had a large space to myself. The view outside was scenic, at least by Singaporean standards. With the windows down, I felt the gentle breeze of the night and the world in its natural state of being. It felt right. Just me and the world under a starry moonlit sky. For the better part of an hour, nothing else mattered.