Sydney

Walking around downtown Toronto and taking transit through Scarborough (granted, not the best sample) made me cognizant of just how shabby Torontonians are relative to Sydneysiders, and Canberrians, and Aussies in general.

Sydney is now my favourite city in the world, and I’ll safely say that it’s the only city I’ve been to that I’d rather live in than Toronto. Beautiful city, beautiful people, beautiful weather – everything one could ask for.

What makes Sydney so great?

The city – Sydney is perfection. The harbour, dotted with beaches, marinas, sailboats, and the world-famous Opera House and Harbour Bridge, is breathtaking. The skyline is impressive. The downtown core is remarkably clean and green, with palm trees and gum trees lining the streets, and the monumental Hyde Park and the beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens giving Sydneysiders a break from the hustle and bustle. There are pedestrian-only streets and alleys and passageways filled with fine dining, patios, and shopping. The city is constantly brimming with energy and life. The nightlife is positively happening. And there are no homeless people or panhandlers hassling you at every corner. You always feel safe.

The whole city has a very relaxed, upbeat vibe, and there’s a classy, cosmopolitan sophistication to the city – moreso than Toronto, which at times feels very gritty and industrial. Sydney just feels richer, more white-collar – more of a world city than Toronto.

Demographics – Sydney is a diverse city with IMO the ideal ethnic mix: 60% white (mostly WASP), 30% Asian (mostly Hong Kongers, but Koreans and Viets as well), 10% brown (mostly Lebanese and Indian) – enough to make me not feel like an outcast, but not so much to degrade the city ala. Scarborough. The minorities seem educated and well-integrated – they do a good job of screening immigrants and only letting the good ones in. No Mondays.

People – The Aussies are a good-looking people. The guys are slack-jawed and well-built, the women slender and sophisticated – a lot of blondes. You’d be hard-pressed to find a fat or pasty person. I think it’s the outdoors/sporting culture and the year-round balmy weather. But what struck me especially was how well-dressed the people were – all the people looked very clean-cut and well put together, and there aren’t many people that looked poor or notably shabby. The Asian girls in particular are some of the most attractive and fashionable ones I’ve seen.

What also struck me was how little influence hip hop culture had over there – no kids running around in baggy jeans, oversized basketball jerseys, hats tilted sideways, bandanas and chains… no thugs, wiggers, chiggers, wankstas or wannabe gangsters. There isn’t that hard ghetto culture that’s pervasive in the T-Dot. Rather, Aussie kids seemed really clean-cut and well-behaved, and it was a refreshing change.

Transit – There are surface trains (no subways) that run in every direction, reaching out far into the distant suburbs. Fares are paid proportional to how far one is travelling, and you buy tickets from a kiosk, not an overpaid-but-perpetually-striking booth attendant who gets paid a ridiculous sum of money to sit on his lard ass. There are screens that inform passengers of when the next train is to arrive, and where it will stop. They have light rail on the streets, and even a monorail that circles the CBD!

Suburbs – I love the Sydney suburbs. Every suburb is in proximity of a train station, and by every train station you’ll have a pharmacy (“chemist”), a grocery store, a laundromat, some ethnic shops etc. giving it a quaint, almost small-town like feel. My relatives there lived a 10-15 min walk from the train station, and one doesn’t get the sense you don’t need a car to get by. The suburban houses are mostly bungalows (without basements) built on good-sized lots, each house with a fence and gate. And everyone lives in a single-family home – they don’t have vast suburban apartment blocks like we do, keeping pride in home ownership high and preventing ghettos from forming.

Accent – I love the accent. They do say “mate” a lot! Walk into a shop, and you’re more than likely to be greeted with a loud, cheery “How you going, mate?” Also, say “thank you”, and they they won’t say “you’re welcome”; instead, they’ll say “no worries”. I think that in essence epitomizes the difference between polite, reserved nature of Canadians and the open, friendly character of Australians. But what was really strange was seeing brown kids like my cousins and Asian girls especially speak with a hardcore Aussie accent – that really messed up my reality. It’s totally hot.

Culture – What I like about Aussies is that they seem to have a proud, distinct culture. We Canadians tend to define ourselves in opposition to the Americans. The Aussies have their own thing going – like Rugby League/Rugby Union/Aussie Rules Football – perhaps owing to the fact their remote location as a Western outpost by the South Pacific. But there are things that make Australia somewhat parochial; for example, all shops close at 5pm, except on Thursdays (late-night shopping). Also, some stuff are really expensive – think $2.80 for a bottle of Coke, and I forked over $3.00 for bottled water at Hungry Jack’s!

Fortunately, sushi was a lot more reasonably priced. I met with Fiona, who was doing a co-op term there, and she, too was thoroughly blown away by Sydney and echoed a lot of the same sentiments.

Australia thoroughly impressed me. I think of it as hidden gem, a place that’s so far and remote that not many people really bother to think to head down to it. But if Toronto keeps going downhill, then I’m just about ready to flee for sunnier pastures Down Under.

Singapore

The sleek, imposing skyline. A city-state of ~4.5 million, Singapore is a major banking and finance hub in Asia.

Shopping, probably the second most common activity in Singapore. It’s a shopper’s mecca. There are huge sprawling malls everywhere, and you can get anything you can get in Canada plus more… except maybe Timbits.

Eating out – would have to be THE most common activity here. People stay up into the wee hours of the night, and hawkers are everywhere. And cheap. And delicious. And still the people stay skinny.

Singapore is best known for its immaculate cleanliness. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any litter. Roads are smooth and pothole-free. Toronto with its cigarette-butt and gum-stained sidewalks seems like a dump by comparison.

- MRT. Singapore transit makes the TTC look like something out of Mogadishu. Ultra-modern and squeaky-clean. And super-busy all hours of the day. Kiosks from which you can top-up your card. Screens that let you know when the next train is due to arrive. Automated messages that tell you to mind the gap and not block the doorway – in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. Subway lines that extend everywhere. A broad, expansive bus network – crucial in a society where people live in tiny apartments and only a handful own cars.

- Coolies. Mostly Indian/Bangladeshi/Indonesian, they do the dirty construction jobs in the searing heat and humidity that no local Singaporean would stoop to. And forget amnesty – these guys come on 2-year work permits and get kicked out afterwards, though they have the option of renewal if the employer chooses. So Singapore’s spick-and-span spotlessness and rapid growth comes very much on the backs of cheap, Third World indentured labour.

- Maids. About 30% of “households” keep maids, usually imported from the Phillipines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. There have been stories of them consorting with the construction guys, some even getting pregnant. It’s a growing concern.

- Eye contact from strangers passing by. I noticed a lot more of it happening in Singapore. Of course, there’s the inevitable brown-on-brown stare-down, when the offending party (usually a skeevy moustachioed brown guy) tries to figure out what species of brown you are and whether you are one of his kind, and in my case it’s not exactly discernable at first glance, so I always get the creep glare and whether in Singapore or Scarborough, that’s universal everywhere. But I even found myself getting eyed by the local Chinese girls, much more so than over here. Maybe I stack up well against the local dudes – certainly there aren’t many whites guys or black guys to compete with. One pretty office-worker type even smiled at me from a bus stand as I jaywalked across the street and boarded a cab. That pretty much never happens to me in Toronto.

- Race relations. In Singapore there are three main groups – Indians, mostly Tamil (~10%), Malay Muslims (~15%). The rest are Mandarin Chinese, and they run the show. You also have a non-trivial white ex-pat pop – mostly Brits, Aussies and Americans. All the groups get on well on the surface, and there is respect for all faiths – Hindu temple jostle for space with Sikh and Buddhist ones and mosques. And it’s not uncommon for public signs to be displayed in all four(!) official languages.

But I do wonder if there’s covert racism beneath the surface, evidenced by subtle behaviour. Would a Singaporean Chinese girl seat herself next to a curry-smelling, dirty-Sanchez sporting dark-skinned Tamil FOB on the MRT? I myself was taken by surprise when, while seated on a two-seater, a fairly attractive short-shorts-and-flip-flops-clad Chinese woman in her 30s entered the train and promptly assumed the seat next to mine when there were vacant seats in the vicinity. Then again I was clean-shaven and dressed for a night on the town, and sport a dark tan complexion closer to the Singaporean mean than the “blacker-than-black-people black” of a lot of the Indian Tamil workers there. I asked if the rep of brown people was degraded by all the imported labourers, but Kandan and Naren attested that the locals could differentiate between the native Singaporean browns and the foreign and definitively non-cool coolie imports. I’m sure the notoriously status-conscious and gold-digging Singaporean women are cued into class markers – clothes and shoes being the biggest.

- Entertainment. Singapore has a beautiful riverfront entertainment district lined with clubs and bars that would put Toronto’s industrial warehouse renos on Richmond to shame. Drinks are insanely expensive – $13 SGP for a Heineken. Maybe it’s an effort by the paternalistic government to curb binge drinking. Or maybe the locals betray the low-tolerance/cheap-drunks stereotype, and bars gotta make their coin somehow. It’s also insanely civilized – no puking, pissing, screaming, hooting, shootings, cops on horses… Eddie, you’d find that refreshing here.

- Hookers. Yeah, they’re quite common and concentrated in the Red Light District of Geylang. Mostly Thai or Mainland Chinese. Prostitution is legal in Singapore, though active solicitation is not. Nonetheless, I saw it happen when I went out into Riverside Point – mostly middle-aged ex-pat white guys getting propositioned, because they’re assumed to have money. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s for hire though because the local girls wear next-to-nothing as it is. Another scary prospect is that often the girls are not really girls… good thing I had a couple of local Singaporean mates to point out the she-males.

In sum, Singapore’s a fascinating place – a buzzing, sparkling, multi-racial Southeast Asian oasis of wealth in a cesspool of poverty and squalor. A city-state with no natural resources that built itself into a Tier-2 Alpha city on the strengths of the visionary leadership of Lee Kuan Yuew and its intelligent, disciplined people. Some of us in the West might criticize Singapore for its autocratic heavy-handedness, but you know what? Fuck democracy – what’s the point of a free press when most people can’t afford the paper???

Sydney is next.

Hope you have Broadband

This is rapidly morphing into a photoblog.

Singapore Lite

I’m in the State Library of New South Wales waiting for my camera’s battery to recharge.

Got in from Singapore yesterday. Man it’s HOT over there – I know now why white people didn’t settle there despite colonizing it. But it’s an awesome place, a place that’s ultra-modern in many ways but still retaining some Third World aspects, a place where you’ll see an Indian woman in a sari next to a next a Malay woman in a hijab next to a Chinese girl in a miniskirt. The confluence of different cultures gives it an interesting dynamic. For a guy that’s lived in comfy, quiet, neutered Canada effectively all his life, the sights, the sounds, the equatorial heat, the lack of reassuring white faces can all be overwhelming.

I’m in Sydney now and it’s kinda like Toronto with tropical trees and it’s a lot busier. The weather is much like Toronto when I’d left it last week… They call this winter. More thoughts later.

Jello Pudding Eating Mofo

Always funny when comedians riff at each other.

Barack N Roll

A lot of people have been asking me about where the differences between Barack Obama and Hillary lie…

Like I said back in September ’06…

I think (Bill) O’Reilly’s statement is reflective of the bimodal frame of thought that I find is all too pervasive in America. People here tend to put themselves firmly into one of two camps; there’s no gray area. You’re either on the right or left, a conservative or a liberal, Republican or Democrat, in a red state or a blue state. Throw in a war most people think is pointless, 6 million cable news channels with 12 million political pundits, the most divisive President in recent memory, and underlying it all the omnipresent threat of terrorism, and you have a healthy tempest for polarization, paranoia, finger-pointing, and squabbling.

Now watch Barack at a Texas rally as he coolly transitions from Obama the policy-wonk to Obama the preacher, working the crowd into a frenzy (from 2:30 onwards).

Now can we imagine Mr. straight-talk McCain espousing this message to a predominantly black audience? It’s the sort of message that needs to be heard in order for transformative progress to come about. Like I said back in July ’06 denoucing Africentric schools…

Why can’t these liberal numbskull M.Ed eggheads get their heads out of the sand and tackle the root of the problem? It’s not Eurocentrism, for if it was, why do many non-European groups do well? It has to do with environment and culture.

Kumar backs Obama:

I Shook Hands with Barack Obama

On Sunday a couple of buddies and I went on a trek down to the Midwest. It was to watch Barack Obama speak at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio – the heart of Rustbelt, USA.

We waited in line in the bitter cold. It was well worth it because we got up right up to the front of the auditorium. Interesting crowd, a mix between loyal Obama supporters who’d driven in from out of town/out of state, and locals. And you could always tell the locals, probably unemployed, because they had a look of loss and bleakness in this morbid, desolate industrial town that had clearly seen better days. What better place, then, for Obama’s platform of change.

We waited two hours or so. Then Senator Obama took to the stage. Commanding presence. Strong, unwavering voice. Brilliant orator. He had all 6,000+ in the auditorium enraptured from the very first minute. And it was stirring to see a man stand before me articulate far more better than I ever could the problems that plague America, and the things that need to be done to bring about change.

I think this guy is the real deal. When he purports to be a man that stands above the petty partisan politics that pervades Washington, a man that will bring the nation together, you believe him. Because there is a sincerity about Barack Obama – a genuineness, a decent guy quality that is far too uncommon in the smarmy world of politics. “I’m not here to tell America what it wants to hear. I’m here to tell America what it needs to hear” – how often do you hear that?

And there is also a decency about him, a likeability; he doesn’t come across as a guy who believes he’s too smart to talk to you, and if there’s anything Americans like it’s a folksy kinda guy… Boston Brahmin Kerry learned the hard way. Moreover, I like Obama because I see a bit of myself in him and him in myself – a man of a darker hue with an unusual name, a man of humble roots, a man who struggled to reconcile his bicultural identity, a deep thinker, a man who shares the same concerns for the welfare of his people… even his diction and manner of speaking.

It always strikes me as ironic when Hillary and the likes berate Barack for “empty platitudes” – that his stirring campaign of hope, of change, of holding America to its promise – is predicated on naïve optimism. I think this sentiment is far too symptomatic of the all-pervasive cynicism of the political climate today – I mean there’s a reason why The Colbert Report is such a hit. We need to get back to the days when America stood as a beacon of hope, when America was on the frontier of science and innovation, when Kennedy challenged the nation to fly to the moon, when Americans dared to dream of a better tomorrow. I can’t help but think that this man is our generation’s JFK.

And while I’m not a big fan of the US in its present form, I’ve always been enchanted by the romance of the ideals on which the very idea of America is predicated – liberty, democracy, progress, opportunity, emancipation from the shackles of tyranny.

Barack Obama will hold America to its promise.

B-Dat

Ran into Jon at DC on Friday. Purely coincidental. Fortuitous as he likes to say. Hit up his home haunt of Brantford afterwards… went cruising for joints and shit to hit. Talk about dead, this place was quieter than Shaq’s CD release party. On the bright side, chilled in his basement and caught up with the season finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Now the 4th and 5th seasons were lackluster, but the 6th was a return to form if for no other reason than the addition of Leon.

Turns out Larry and Leon have the same cell phone. They get their phones mixed up.

I’m Getting That Shirt

Part 2 | Part 3

Well-articulated short film of the Nice Guy’s dilemna. By Wong Fu productions (the guys that brought you Yellow Fever.)

00:53 – Katherine Lau? lol
03:00 – ACCRITSAP – Asian Culture Club Really Intended to Socalize and Party… hahaha, reminds me of CASA. The guy looks, walks, and talks like Sam Kou, it’s unreal.
04:55 – Ladder Theory – sound advice.

Phil Wang has an interesting Xanga – www.xanga.com/wongfuphil.

An Exchange with a Prof

January 11, 2008 5:08:16 PM

Dear Professor xxxxx,

My name is Sen xxxx (ID xxxxxxxx). I was enrolled in your Geog 202 class in Fall 2007.

My mark as per Quest is 71, and I am a little perplexed as to why it is so low. I fared well on both the midterm and the essay, and I believe my final exam was well done.

Would you be able to take a look once again at how my mark was obtained? Perhaps have a review of my exam to ensure that no pages were missing?

I would like to arrange a meeting during your office hours if that is possible so I can review my final exam. Please let me know of your availability.

Thanks.

Sen

January 11, 2008 8:25:14 PM

Hi
You received 26.8/40 on your final exam. If you would like to look at it you may come by my office on Tuesday or Thurs between 11:30 and 12:30.

Sincerely,

xxxxx

January 15, 2008 2:50:10 PM

Hi

I took a look at your final exam and have uncovered an error. I had recorded your grade as 67/100, rather than 76. I’m really sorry about this. Given that you did better on the final than the test, I have made the exam worth 50%, and the midterm worth 15. Your final grade for the course, then, is 76%.

Again, I’m very sorry about this error. I’m just glad you contacted me. I will submit a grade revision tomorrow.

Sincerely,

xxxxx

January 16, 2008 2:27:30 PM

Hi,

Thank you for making the correction and the weight adjustment.

Sen

Wonder how many people get screwed over on account of bonehead mistakes like this?