Saturday, September 17, 2005
So, it seems like the spammers aren't taking up my offer!Anyway, here's a decent set of lyrics from a pop-rock song by Taiwanese singer Wu Bai. As you can guess, the original's in Chinese, so I'm translating it here.
The song title is The End of Love.
If the end was known to be like this, why did we even meet in the first place
After we met is there a need to ask again the reason for our parting
The starry sky without a moon is a starry sky that is mine
I can fly or jump without feeling lonely for the shooting stars keep me company
Of course maybe you would feel a little tinge of guilt
Promises themselves can't regret the reason they leave the lips
Without traces of you but full of traces of me
I can cry or laugh for any eternity for this is the end of love
The raining night is most beautiful
It throws up every static object halfway into the sky
Seeing your smile I cannot sleep (I cannot sleep)
Why am I back at the starting point
Quick, let me have no strength
Quick, let me have no strength to think of you
Let me join the little raindrops falling outside the window
And disappear in the vast land
Let me fly
Let me fly in the night sky
Only in the night sky can my heart be further from the end that is cowardice
To feel sadness when flying is an act of excessiveness
Why do I suddenly feel a nameless joy when I shuttle through the darkness
Let me fly
Let me fly in the night sky
Only in the night sky can my heart be further from the end that is cowardice
To feel sadness when flying is an act of excessiveness
I'm turning into a liberated cloud of smoke
And cavorting with the rain in the cold northern wind
Let me fly
Let me fly in the night sky
Only in the night sky is there that familiar silence that locks up events of the past
Time will always be an excuse for escape
Floating halfway in the sky lets you face the freefall that is in progress
Of course maybe you would feel a little tinge of guilt
Promises themselves can't regret the reason they leave the lips
Without traces of you but full of traces of me
I can cry or laugh for any eternity for this is the end of love
It's the end of love
The end of love
The end of love
The end of love
It's a decent song, Wu Bai-style rock. You should get a listen if you can.
gambitch [ 4:47 PM]
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Somebody was actually dumb enough to leave a comment on this blog calling me an idiot. Well, he actually didn't call me that - he used an F-word I shall not type out in full myself. There's nothing wrong with calling me an idiot per se; what made it dumb was that the comment appeared in response to a previous post about Khizanishvili's Blackburn Rovers debut - a post in which I don't think I actually said anything particularly controversial, which makes the comment a total non sequitur, and hence, dumb.I have deleted the comment from my blog because it was so utterly irrelevant. And also because it used abusive language. I'm sure the guy will come back and fire more such stuff at me, and I welcome him. Hence this post.
gambitch [ 11:08 PM]
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Some time ago, I wrote about how a charity organization withdrew a lawsuit it had filed against a newspaper. Subsequently, I also wrote about how its entire top brass quit the organization.That was some two months ago. What's happened since? Through a Singapore contact, I learnt that a new interim board and CEO had been put in place by the local government, who stepped in because apparently the outgoing board wanted it to. The new boys wasted no time going through the old paperwork, and for some reason, it now appears that police investigations are going on. From what I'm told, the investigations involve possible criminal wrongdoing on the part of the old board, along the lines of corporate mismanagement and even corruption (anti-corruption cops are said to be on the case, though this is not yet confirmed from what I know).
And so this charity organization, which used to be so incredibly high-profile because of its success in garnering donations from a public that has been hit by a weakening economy since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, suddenly finds its "good name" dragged through the mud.
And what do I think of all this? I think it's good!
If it does indeed turn out that this organization did break the law, and - more importantly - knowingly so, then I'm glad they've been found out. Even if they didn't, the lesson to be learnt is that you can't hide criminal activity behind the guise of charitable causes. Sadly it's a human weakness for people to have the disposition that charitable organizations can't be doing anything wrong because, well, they're supposed to be charitable organizations. It's as if that status granted them an automatic benefit of moral credibility. I'm the cynical type who prefers to keep awarding people less and less moral credibility, until and unless I check them out first.
So I'm perfectly happy to see that fallacious kind of thinking busted. Just because they're supposed to be the good guys doesn't make them any bit less accountable. Accountability is something that we demand today in many civilized societies where people have learnt that they can be lied to about things that they shouldn't be lied to. We ask for more information, just so we make sure people can't lie through their teeth about things we care about, like where our donations are going. Is this idea a product of democracy? I don't really care. What I do care about is that this incident has busted that old misconception that charities can be implicitly trusted to do all the right things, particularly when they're run like businesses, or have lots of money.
In short, public organizations that have lots of cash automatically warrant scrutiny. And the more money they have or the more 'good' their alignment, the harder and closer the scrutiny.
When the Singapore cops and public are done with this charity organization, as they eventually will be, who should be next in the crosshairs? Some suggest the state government. I'd buck that trend and suggest someone else, just like I did when conversing on the issue with my contact. Half-jokingly, I said, "Why not try a church?"
I wasn't having just any random church in mind. Nor was I thinking of Pat Robertson and his Christian Coalition. No, I was thinking specifically of this Singaporean church called City Harvest, of whom I have heard quite a number of stories, some rather bemusing.
City Harvest is what Singaporeans call a Christian church, by which they probably mean non-Catholic. I'm agnostic and heavily disinterested in the finer details of the great Christian split, but if I may digress (sure I can - this is my blog) my limited knowledge has Christianity split into two large families - the Catholic and the Protestant. To my limited knowledge, Protestant-speak has it that Catholics are somehow not Christian, hence they ask "are you Christian or Catholic?" rather than "are you Protestant or Catholic?". I find this line of questioning highly discriminatory, not to mention appallingly morally and religiously presumptuous, as if the Catholics are their discarded distant cousins of some sort.
But I digress.
City Harvest, according to a Wikipedia article reproduced at NationMaster.com, is Charismatic-Pentacostal. Whatever that's supposed to mean, it's also got phenomenal membership that, at least, cuts across a very large slice of the population spectrum, with many members classifiable as young and decently-educated. Numerically its membership base is large. I know a rather large number of friends and acquaintances are City Harvest Church members - which is shocking enough given how few friends and acquaintances I have. A large membership base apparently also means lots of money in membership fees, so we're talking about what is probably a very wealthy church here.
This church apparently spends a good deal of that money on its building, which looks modern, brilliant and - dare I say it - scary! Definitely it gives a few other major regional icons a run for their money in terms of impressiveness. See for example the photos here and here.
In stark contrast, most other church buildings in this part of the world don't look so, er, snazzy. Take this example from another well-known cathedral in Singapore - apparently the oldest, St. Andrew's.
(sourced from VirtualTourist.com)
Of course, this isn't a post discussing church building architecture. My point is that City Harvest sure had lots of money and didn't seem too shy about flaunting it via its jaw-dropper of a church building. There are also a couple of other controversies involving this church, linked in part to funny little facts. For example, the wife of the pastor who founded this church enjoyed a short-lived career as a pop singer, and it was alleged that a good slice of her fan base happened to be City Harvest followers. You can imagine all the usual news stories that happen when two and two get put together. Suffice to say, though, that she was dubbed "the Singing Pastor" and was popular enough to sell energy drinks. And yes, she was already married when she started her singing career.
Do I have lots of cold, hard fact to allege some kind of malpractice by this church? I'll be upfront and say I actually don't. It's worth a look, though; we've got here a church with phenomenal recruitment methods and, it would seem, lots of dosh. It's listed as a megachurch, which can only mean it has some kind of market dominance - and it's still aggressively recruiting, from what my friend tells me. It's also been very successful at drawing negative commentary from a couple of bloggers of different Christian denominations (good for them). For example, a Technorati search on this church turned up this disapproving blog entry and this one where the author certainly got spooked.
Yet, because they don't do annual shows beamed live on TV, they've largely managed to stay under the community's radar.
(Wikipedia reveals the church has actually denied having anything significant to do with the "Singing Pastor"'s music career. Or something like that, anyway. Are they lawsuit-happy? I have no idea.)
This, as I told my friend, should change. I don't care if you're just another innocuous-looking church group. You deserve the community's close scrutiny for building such an opulent structure. Pat Robertson's previous records indicated even religious people can do grave wrong. And if society has - rightly or wrongly - lost faith in secular charities in recent months, then it's ready to lose some faith in specific religious groups as well.
gambitch [ 3:51 AM]
Monday, September 12, 2005
Two quizzes in three posts? No, I've not become a blogquiz addict. Rather, I took this one because I saw it on Whiteout's blog, and also because I loved watching and reading Peanuts when I was a kid. I still read the strip, but it's not the same knowing Schulz has passed on.Anyway:
You are Rerun!
Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Not sure I identify that much with Rerun, except remembering he didn't talk much, if at all, and feeling the same way at times.
gambitch [ 10:12 PM]
